Mogadishu  - A British reporter and a Spanish photographer were released Sunday after 40 days' captivity in Somalia's semi- autonomous Puntland region, officials said.

Colin Freeman, who worked for Britain's Sunday Telegraph and freelance photographer Jose Cendon were in Puntland covering a surge in piracy off Somalia when they were seized from the port town of Bosasso.

"The two western journalists were released this morning and they are now in a hotel in Bosasso," Bile Mohamoud Qabowsade, a senior advisor to the Puntland president, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"I don't know whether a ransom was paid but the journalists appear to be in good health," he added. Rumours suggest that a ransom of around 800,000 dollars was paid to secure the pair's release.

Journalists and aid workers have this year increasingly become targets for kidnap and murder in lawless Somalia, where a bloody Islamist insurgency is raging.

Two other western journalists - a Canadian woman and Australian man - who kidnapped in August in Mogadishu outskirts are still missing.