20091227

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A helicopter dropped a $4 million ransom payment on Sunday on to the deck of a Chinese coal ship hijacked by Somali pirates in mid-October, a pirate source on board the vessel said.

The De Xin Hai and its 25 crew were carrying about 76,000 tonnes of coal from South Africa to Mundra in India when it was seized in an audacious attack by the gunmen some 700 miles east of the Horn of Africa.

Heavily armed sea gangs from Somalia have made tens of millions of dollars in ransoms hijacking vessels in the Indian Ocean and strategic Gulf of Aden, which links Europe to Asia.

Patrols in the area by warships from several nations only appear to have forced the pirates to hunt further from shore.

"A helicopter dropped the ransom money on to the ship. We have received $4 million," Hassan, one of the pirates on the De Xin Hai, told Reuters by telephone to cheers in the background.

"We hope to disembark in a few hours," he added.

"The crew is safe and, although they will not have their freedom for a few more days, they are all happy now."

The chaos in the waters off Somalia is a reflection of a civil war on land that has killed 19,000 civilians since the start of 2007 and driven 1.5 million from their homes, triggering one of the world's worst humanitarian emergencies.