Somali pirates released a hijacked oil tanker and its eight Sri Lankan crew on Thursday, a Somali security official and the pirates said, bringing the first hijacking since 2012 to an unusually swift conclusion without the payment of a ransom. "There has been discussion going on after the gunfight of this afternoon … We took our forces back and thus the pirates went away," said Abdirahman Mohamud Hassan, the director general of the Puntland maritime police force.