In a statement released here as the hijacking saga entered its 54th day, the WFP said it believed almost all of the German- and Japanese-donated food aid on the MV Semlow was still in the ship's hold.

"Our contacts in the region assure us that the vast bulk of the 850 tonnes of rice aboard the Semlow has not been taken ashore or removed from the ship," said Robert Hauser, the Nairobi-based WFP country director for Somalia.

"We once again call for the immediate, unconditional release of the Semlow, its crew and the cargo of food," he said.

On Wednesday, local residents had told AFP that the Somali pirates in control of the ship had begun to remove unknown but small quantities of rice from the Semlow which has been anchored in captivity off the town of Haradere since June 27.

But a man claiming to be one of the gunmen denied that the group intended to take all the food and only a minimal amount had been removed to meet the needs of the hijackers and the crew of eight Kenyans, a Tanzanian and a Sri Lankan.

The gunmen have been alternately demanding the food and a 500,000-dollar ransom for the release of the ship and the crew and rejected a deal negotiated by intermediaries for the rice to be offloaded near Mogadishu for distribution in central Somalia.

The WFP has refused to pay any ransom and said in the Friday statement it was increasingly worried about the welfare of the 10-man crew of the Semlow.

"It must be a terrible and a very worrying ordeal for all 10 of them stuck on that ship still anchored 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the Somali coast," it said. "The poor families of the crew have waited too long to see their loved ones safe."

The agency called on the transitional Somali government, which brokered the earlier aborted agreement for the release of the ship, crew and cargo, to increase its efforts to the resolve the situation.

"We urge the (government) to help end this problem peacefully," it said. "This has gone on too long."

The hijackers seized the St Vincent and the Grenadines-registered ship in pirate-infested waters some 300 kilometres (185 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu that have been rated highly unsafe by international maritime authorities.

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