Pirates attempt hijack of another US ship, fled as Navy ship arrived
Pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at an American ship carrying humanitarian aid off the coast of Somalia in the fifth attack on a commercial vessel since the US Navy's rescue of a captured freighter captain.
The MV Liberty Sun was today heading to Kenya with a US Navy escort after the pirates' unsuccessful attempt to seize the cargo vessel and its 20-strong American crew, none of whom were reported injured.
"We are under attack by pirates, we are being hit by rockets. Also bullets," one crewman, 26-year-old Thomas Urbik, wrote in an email to his mother. "We are barricaded in the engine room and so far no one is hurt. [A] rocket penetrated the bulkhead but the hole is small. Small fire, too, but put out."
The ship, which suffered some damage in the incident yesterday, "conducted evasive manoeuvres" to ward off the pirates before the destroyer USS Bainbridge arrived in response to an emergency call, a US Navy spokesman said. The pirate vessel fled before the Navy ship arrived.
The Bainbridge is the ship from which US Navy snipers killed three pirates who were holding Richard Phillips, the captain of the freighter Maersk Alabama, on board a drifting lifeboat. A fourth pirate was captured in the operation on Sunday. Phillips had been held for five days after exchanging himself to safeguard his crew.
The MV Liberty Sun was today heading to Kenya with a US Navy escort after the pirates' unsuccessful attempt to seize the cargo vessel and its 20-strong American crew, none of whom were reported injured.
"We are under attack by pirates, we are being hit by rockets. Also bullets," one crewman, 26-year-old Thomas Urbik, wrote in an email to his mother. "We are barricaded in the engine room and so far no one is hurt. [A] rocket penetrated the bulkhead but the hole is small. Small fire, too, but put out."
The ship, which suffered some damage in the incident yesterday, "conducted evasive manoeuvres" to ward off the pirates before the destroyer USS Bainbridge arrived in response to an emergency call, a US Navy spokesman said. The pirate vessel fled before the Navy ship arrived.
The Bainbridge is the ship from which US Navy snipers killed three pirates who were holding Richard Phillips, the captain of the freighter Maersk Alabama, on board a drifting lifeboat. A fourth pirate was captured in the operation on Sunday. Phillips had been held for five days after exchanging himself to safeguard his crew.
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