NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Somali pirates have released a cargo ship and its 16 Asian crew members they had held for 26 days, after the cargo owners agreed to pay a $100,000 ransom, a maritime official said Tuesday.

Somali pirates have hijacked eight vessels this year, said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Program. That matches the total number of pirate attacks off the Somali coast in 2006. The Somali cargo owners, "negotiated with the pirates on Monday and agreed to pay $100,000, though the pirates requested $150,000," said Mwangura. "Now the ship is on its way to Mogadishu to offload its cargo there."

The MV Mariam Queen, which flies a St. Kitts flag and is owned by a shipping company in the United Arab Emirates, was hijacked on May 3, Mwangura said.

The UN World Food Program has appealed for high-level international action to secure the waters off Somalia, saying piracy is threatening aid deliveries to a country trying to recover from the worst fighting in more than a decade.

Earlier this month, a ship carrying tons of UN humanitarian aid for Somalia refused to leave Kenya because of the piracy. In 2005, two ships carrying WFP aid were overwhelmed by pirates.

Somalia does not have a coast guard or navy and has not had an effective central government since 1991, when warlords ousted longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on one another, making the country's 1,880-mile coastline one of the most dangerous for ships.

Somali pirates are trained fighters, often dressed in military fatigues, using speedboats equipped with satellite phones and Global Positioning System equipment. They are typically armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rocket launchers and various types of grenades, according to the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia.

Mwangura said that Somali pirates are still holding four fishing vessels.

He said that South Korean companies own two of them, both flying a Tanzanian flag. Another vessel is Indian-owned and the fourth one is Taiwanese-owned, said Mwangura, adding that all but one of those vessels are being held at Haradheere, 137 miles northeast of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.