Somali pirates who kidnapped a British couple last month were preparing to defend their hostages from Islamist extremists, who they said were heading to the area with plans to seize them.

The captors of Paul and Rachel Chandler said that they believed the militants would try to take the Britons by force. “We heard that Islamists with battlewagons are on the way. I believe they will not succeed in confiscating the British couple,” Mohamed Shakir, a pirate commander, told The Times yesterday. A battlewagon refers to a pick-up truck with a heavy machinegun mounted on the back — the favoured fighting vehicle in the war-torn region.

The commander denied reports that there had already been a gun battle between rivals struggling for ownership of the Chandlers, who were seized ten days ago aboard their 38ft yacht, Lynn Rival, but added that preparations were being made to defend their human prizes in what threatens to become a deadly tug-of-war. Mr Shakir said that the hostages, who are aged 59 and 55, had been taken inland to Bahdo, a town 125 miles northeast of the notorious pirate haven of Haradheere, and that more pirates were on their way to the town to act as reinforcements.

“Armed pirates are flowing into Bahdo to defend against any Islamists’ attack,” he said.

A local elder, Abdullahi Said, said that attempts were under way to mediate between the pirates and the Islamists in the hope of preventing any armed clashes.

The pirates believe the Chandlers, who were taken as they sailed from the Seychelles to Tanzania, to be valuable hostages. In a telephone call to the BBC last week one pirate, claiming to speak for the gang holding them, demanded a ransom of $7 million (£4.5 million). The British Government has said that it will not pay any ransom.

Other reports have suggested that the pirates might want to organise a prisoner exchange, swapping the Chandlers for a group of pirates who were arrested by an EU warship on anti-piracy patrol off the Somali coast.

If the Islamist militants were to be successful with their assault and capture, it would raise the stakes dangerously for the Chandlers. While Somali pirates are only interested in money, demanding very large ransoms and usually settling for far less, the various Islamic militias that hold sway across much of Somalia have ideological motivations and are less open to negotiation.

Figures released by the International Maritime Bureau showed that pirate attacks worldwide in 2009 have already exceeded the total for 2008, which itself was a record year for piracy. The majority of the attacks are attributed to Somalis.

A multinational force of warships has done little to deter the pirates, whose attacks are increasingly frequent and brazen. There have been at least 163 attacks so far in 2009, 47 of which were successful. At least eight ships and more than 150 crew members are being held.

Using hijacked trawlers as “mother ships”, the pirate gangs are able to extend their range ever farther from the Somali coast. Recent attacks have been launched more than 600 miles (960km) from the mainland, often to the north of the Seychelles.

With the monsoon season now over, the seas are calmer and winds lighter, making conditions ideal for pirates, who usually operate from small skiffs with outboard motors that cannot withstand heavy seas.

At the weekend two men, a Somali and a Yemeni, were shot dead by members of the EU naval force in the Gulf of Aden. A boarding party from a Norwegian warship came under fire as it prepared to search a fishing boat off the northeast coast of Somalia. Norwegian sailors returned fire, killing at least two of the suspected pirates.

“These were not innocent fishermen. They were armed with heavy machineguns and Kalashnikovs and were clearly up to no good,” said John Harbour, commander of the European Union naval mission in the area.

Yesterday a US-flagged cargo vessel came under small arms fire about 400 miles off Mombasa, Kenya, the US Navy said.

Additional reporting by a correspondent in Mogadishu

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