Tension has been high in the central Somali pirate lair since an estimated seven million dollars were dropped by a small plane on Sunday for the release of the VLCC Maran Centaurus. The Greek-flagged supertanker is a third of a kilometre (300 yards) long and carrying two million barrels of crude oil.
"The situation is calm this morning but there is still tension between the pirates. Three of them, including a senior pirate leader, were killed so far and three others were injured," local elder Moalim Abdalla Hasan told AFP. "We are trying to mediate between them because they are disturbing our peace. A civilian was killed in the crossfire and the residents are very concerned about this feud," he added.
Hasan Nile, a local grocer who could not open his shop on Tuesday because of the security situation in Harardhere, said the pirate vendetta involved heavy weapons. "I think there will not be trust between them any more since they killed each other. Three pirates have died already since yesterday and if there's no swift mediation, more will die, including civilians," Nile said.
Harardhere resident Husein Warsame said late Monday that the fighting between members of the Saleban sub-clan had brought life to a standstill. "There is no movement so far, the pirates are exchanging heavy machine gun fire inside the town and there are dead bodies in the streets," he said.
According to other sources in Harardhere, two pirates died when a dispute flared on Sunday, immediately after the Maran Centaurus' ransom was delivered, bringing to six the number of people killed over the disputed ransom. Somalia's pirates treat every successful hijacking like a private venture in which businessmen from all over the country can invest by offering financial or material assistance, buying and selling shares.
The bigger the captured vessel, the more complex the shareholder structure. Squabbling over a ransom is not uncommon but Monday night's clashes were some of the most violent recorded in Somalia's otherwise relatively united piratehood. According to Ecoterra International, an environmentalist NGO monitoring illegal maritime activity in the region, the pirates received up to nine million dollars in at least two separate payments.