US Navy Seals rescue captain unharmed, kill three pirates

US NAVY snipers fired from the fantail of the destroyer USS Bainbridge 30 yards from the lifeboat where Maersk Alabama captain Richard Phillips, 53, was in imminent danger, and killed a pirate aiming an AK-47 at the captain's back, US military officials said after the ship's master was rescued unharmed.

After bobbing since Wednesday off the Somali coast in a lifeboat cabin, where temperatures topped 100 degrees, Capt Richard Phillips was whisked to the Bainbridge after the fusillade killed two other pirates and induced another to surrender.

After showering and changing clothes, Capt Phillips then spoke to his wife in Vermont. The 1,092-TEU Maersk Alabama had been docked at Mombasa since Saturday with its American crew but without its captain. At the news, sailors came out on deck and whooped for joy, waving a US flag, sounding the ship's horn and firing flares across the night sky, reported The Washington Post.

He's one of the bravest men I ever met," one of the crew members said of the captain, who boarded the lifeboat with the pirates in exchange for the crew who had regained control of the ship. "He's a national hero.

The US naval operation ended a tense, five-day standoff in which four pirates armed with pistols and AK-47s ultimately faced off with the USS Halyburton, a guided-missile frigate equipped with helicopters, and the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship with missile launchers, attack planes and a crew of 1,000, which had joined the Bainbridge.

The ship was deployed in Maersk Line's EAF4 (East Africa 4) service with a short regional rotation: Salalah, Djibouti, Mombasa and back to Salalah. It was carrying 400 TEU of food aid for World Food Programme.

The ship, once named the Alva Maersk is now a US-flagged vessel owned and operated by Maersk Line Limited, of Norfolk, Virginia, a unit of Denmark's AP Moller-Maersk, which runs ships under the US Department of Defence Maritime Security Programme. The ship, bound for Mombasa, was not on US military service at the time of the attack.

Source: CRIEnglish