A court in Somalia's autonomous State of Puntland sentences 10 people accused of attacking boats and piracy to 20 years in prison.

Judge Mohamed Abdi Aware of Puntland's Supreme Court said the ten were arrested last October after they hijacked a boat contracted by Somali traders.

The arrests were made after a brief exchange of fire between the Puntland coastguards and the pirates.

The defendants pleaded not guilty saying "we are not criminals and the reason we were attacking the ships is that they were collecting the resources from our waters."

"It is not our fault that we exchanged fire with the coastguards... because they opened fire on us," one of defendants, Abdirashid Muse Mohamed, said before the final verdict was read.

The hearing of nine other pirates, who had been arrested by French commandos last year, was delayed by the court on Saturday.

Puntland is known as the Gulf of Aden's piracy hub. Close to 150 attacks by Somali pirates on foreign ships were reported in 2008, most of them in the Gulf of Aden, where 16,000 ships bottle-neck into the Red Sea each year on one of the world's busiest maritime trade routes.

FTP/MMN