MOMBASA, Kenya, April 15, 2009
Pirates Vow To "Slaughter" Americans
Threat Comes After U.S. Freighter Escapes Attack And France Detains 11 Other Bandits
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Play CBS Video Video Pirate Attacks Continue Somali pirates have once again attacked an American cargo ship off the coast of Africa. But this time, as Jeff Glor reports, the bandits were unsuccessful due to the interference of the U.S. Navy.
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Video Monitoring The Pirates In an area that's 1.2 million square miles long, monitoring the whereabouts of Somali pirates with nothing to lose is a daunting task for the Pentagon. Lara Logan reports.
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Video Maersk Alabama Returns Home The Maersk Alabama began the journey home after a standoff with Somali pirates. As Sheila MacVicar reports, President Obama is considering new action to cease piracy.
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This undated file photo provided by Katy Urbik shows the Liberty Sun cargo ship, on which her son Thomas Urbik was serving as a crew member when the vessel evaded capture by pirates on April 15, 2009. (CBS/Katy Urbik)
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This May 2007 photo provided by Katy Urbik shows her son Thomas Urbik during his graduation ceremony at Texas A&M Maritime Academy in Galveston, Texas. (CBS/Katy Urbik)
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In this Friday Nov. 5, 2004 file photo, workers unload food aid from the MV Liberty Sun at Eritrea's main Red Sea port, Massawa. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo)
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The Maersk Arun, sister ship to the 17,000-ton container ship Maersk Alabama that was hijacked by Somali pirates with 20 crew members aboard, while sailing from Salalah in Oman to the Kenyan port of Mombassa via Djibouti. Maritime security experts are divided over whether or not merchant seamen should be armed. (AP Photo/Maersk Line)
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"Weapons are damned if you do and damned if you don't," says Capt. Joseph Murphy, whose son was the first mate aboard the Maersk Alabama when it was hijacked. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
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Fast Facts Somalia Learn about the people, economy and history.
Stories:
- Prosecutors: Young Pirate Brash, Brazen
- In NYC, Somali Suspect Charged With Piracy
- Somali Pirate Brainwashed, Mom Says
- Somali Pirates Free Filipino Crew Of 23
- Pirates Vow To "Slaughter" Americans
- U.S. Aid Ship Fired On, Evades Pirates
- Battling Pirates With "Nothing To Lose"
- No End In Sight For Piracy
Photos:
Video:
Pirates fired grenades and automatic weapons at the cargo ship Liberty Sun, but its American crew successfully blockaded themselves inside the engine room. A pirate whose gang attacked the ship said Wednesday that his group was targeting American ships and sailors.
"We will seek out the Americans and if we capture them we will slaughter them," said a 25-year-old pirate based in the Somali port of Harardhere who gave only his first name, Ismail.
"We will target their ships because we know their flags. Last night, an American-flagged ship escaped us by a whisker. We have showered them with rocket-propelled grenades," boasted Ismail, who did not take part in the attack on the Liberty Sun.
The move comes after U.S. Navy sharpshooters killed three pirates Sunday to win the release of a hijacked American sea captain, Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. will pursue new efforts to track down and freeze the assets of pirates, who have reaped multimillion-dollar ransoms for ships they have captured.
"We may be dealing with a 17th century crime, but we need to bring 21st century solutions to bear," she said at a news conference in Washington.
Clinton said the Obama administration also would call for immediate meetings of an international counter-piracy task force to expand naval coordination against pirates operating in the key shipping lanes off Somalia.
French forces launched an early morning attack on a pirate ship after spotting it Tuesday with a surveillance helicopter and observing the pirates overnight. The raid thwarted the bandits' planned attack on the Liberian cargo ship Safmarine Asia, the French Defense Ministry said.
The statement called the pirate vessel a "mother ship" - usually a seized foreign ship that pirates use to transport speedboats far out to sea and resupply them. The ship was intercepted 550 miles east of the Kenyan city of Mombasa.
The 11 detained pirates were being held on the Nivose, a French frigate serving in the international fleet trying to protect shipping in the Gulf of Aden.
France has traditionally been aggressive in fighting piracy - this was its ninth military operation against pirates. Three Somali pirates were in the French city of Rennes on Wednesday facing judicial investigation after being captured in a hostage rescue Friday. Several other pirates are also in French custody after being seized last year.
CBS News correspondent Jeff Glor reports that the continued attacks have triggered outrage and raised renewed questions, like:
"Frankly you just don't have enough naval vessels in the world that you would want to commit to that type of a mission," said counterterrorism expert Juan Zarate.
Tuesday's attack on the Liberty Sun foiled the reunion between Phillips and the 19-man crew he saved with his heroism. Phillips had planned to meet his crew in Mombasa and fly home with them Wednesday, but was stuck on the USS Bainbridge when it was diverted to help the Liberty Sun.
The crew left without him, flying to Andrews Air Force base in Maryland in a chartered plane.
"We are very happy to be going home," crewman William Rios of New York City said before departing Wednesday. "(But) we are disappointed to not be reuniting with the captain in Mombasa. He is a very brave man."
The Liberty Sun had left Houston with a crew of 20 American sailors and a load of aid for the U.N. World Food Program. It warded off the pirates with evasive maneuvers, said U.S. Navy Lt. Nathan Christensen of the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet.
"We are under attack by pirates, we are being hit by rockets. Also bullets," Liberty Sun crewman Thomas Urbik, 26, wrote his mother in an e-mail. "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."
Click here to read more of Urbik's email exchange with his parents from the Liberty Sun's engine room.
By the time the Bainbridge arrived five hours later, the pirates had left. A small group of armed U.S. sailors from the Bainbridge went aboard the Liberty Sun to ensure its safe journey to Mombasa.
Despite President Barack Obama's vow to take action against the rise in banditry and the deaths of five pirates in French and U.S. hostage rescues, brigands have seized four vessels and more than 75 hostages since Sunday's dramatic rescue of Phillips.
Pirates released a Greek-owned cargo ship Wednesday and Greek authorities said all 24 crewmen on the Titan were in good health. The ship had been hijacked March 19 in the Gulf of Aden.
In all, Somali pirates are holding over 280 sailors on 15 ships - at least 76 of those sailors captured in the last few days. Pirates have attacked 79 ships this year and hijacked 19 of them, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a piracy watchdog.
Pirates can extort $1 million or more for each ship and crew seized off the Horn of Africa - and Kenya estimates they raked in $150 million last year.
The United States has asked the International Red Cross and Somali officials to help locate the families of the three pirates slain Sunday by Navy snipers so their remains can be returned, a senior U.S. official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
The difficulties in getting food aid delivered could leave some Somalis hungry.
World Food Program spokesman Peter Smerdon said more food aid was to have been delivered by another cargo ship hijacked Tuesday, the Lebanese-owned MV Sea Horse. It was headed to Mumbai, India, to pick up 7,327 tons of WFP food for Somalia.
"WFP is also extremely concerned that people in Somalia will go hungry unless the Sea Horse is quickly released or a replacement ship can be found," he said.
Hours before the attack on the Sea Horse, pirates seized the Greek-managed bulk carrier MV Irene E.M. in an unusual nighttime raid. They also captured two Egyptian fishing trawlers carrying 36 fishermen.
Pirates say they are fighting illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste in Somali waters but now operate hundreds of miles from there in a sprawling 1.1 million square-mile danger zone.
A flotilla of warships from nearly a dozen countries has patrolled the Gulf of Aden and nearby Indian Ocean waters for months. They have halted many attacks but say the area is so vast they can't stop all hijackings.
The Gulf of Aden, which links the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, is the shortest route from Asia to Europe. More than 20,000 ships cross the vital sea lane every year.
Pirate attacks in the region have rapidly increased lately, according to the International Maritime Bureau. In less than four months this year, there have been 79 attacks, compared to 111 for all of 2008.
In 2003, there were only 21 attacks by Somalis in this expanse of water.
Last year pirates took 815 sailors hostage and hijacked 42 ships.
© MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 473 CommentsThey were kids. The story is out, I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently the hijackers, these kids, the merchant marine organizers, Muslim kids, were upset, they wanted to just give the captain back and head home because they were running out of food, they were running out of fuel, they were surrounded by all these US Navy ships, big ships, and they just wanted out of there. That's the story, but then when one of them put a gun to the back of the captain, Mr. Phillips, then bam, bam, bam. There you have it, and three teenagers shot on the high seas at the order of President Obama.
Let it be known that ibsteve2u is an ardent Obama supporter.
So, don't you Moderates that voted for Obama wonder just who it is that you tied your little red wagon to yet ?
Let stevie's ideas above give you a clue.
It'll take them a year's travel to reach, then get in at
the end of the line to slaughter Americans.
Right, Clinton is going to search out and "freeze" the pirate's money.,,,
Leaving them with no money,,,And guess what a pirate with no
money does.
From terrorists to militants to freedom fighters to insurgents to
extremists to pirates,,,,,,,We're heroes against AK-47-equipped dudes.
Did you read today that "Baghdad is a MAZE of blast walls and
check points"?
Shouldn't we actually DEFEAT one of these AK-47 people before moving
on to the next guy running around in his long johns forcing us
to play HIS game of killing 7 civilians to get three bad guys??
And now we're parading around 20 sailors like women who escaped
with their virginity intact.,,,,,Good lord.
You must realize that Rush is the most highly paid Hit Man in the world.... He is simply a ruthless Character Assassin who just signed a $30 million contract with a $100 million signing bonus.... He's one of the Generals within the republican brain washing machine who has been perpetrating fraud on Americans under the guise of free speech....
Tokyo Rush is a terrorist in his own right. He is a drug addict and it is within his nature to think like a crook and see what he can get away with.... He sets his course attempting to destroy people using words all while hiding behind the Bill of Rights. He is just a over paid punk who will one day go too far so he can be prosecuted to the full extint of the law.....
As far as the Pirate situation I wonder why we don't just turn the satellites on over that area and toast these little pirate boats with a laser beam?..... But be sure to get a copy of the video to the pirates back at their headquarters so they can all see that they're out gunned and a Capitan that orders an attack on an American ship is a lunatic ....
Terrorists always issue vows, because they can?t do anything else.
These gangbangers can threaten to wear us down on land, because on land they can mass their numbers, hide in commandeered buildings, take hostages, kill thousands of innocents, and blame it on us. They've been doing that for the past 8 years as part of their so-called "holy war."
Now they threaten the same thing on water, where no one lives, and there's no place to hide. Let them try their IEDs or suicide bombs on the water. Let them target American checkpoints, only to find no checkpoints, since there are no roads. Sure, they're good guerrillas. Let's see what kind of sailors they are.
In 1940, Adolf Hitler said, "On land I am a hero, but on water I am a coward." Today's Barbary Pirates have no such knowledge of their own limitations, and our sailors will be glad to show them.
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Wow. I don't ususally speak like this, but what kind of an *sshole would say something like this?
Ummmm.... you can join the millitaty in most countries at 18 and wield an automatic weapon. I believe you can join the US army at 17 if you have your parents persmission. Does this mean the US is sending innocent "children" to kill (according to him).
After all, the average age of the solders in Vietnam was 19.
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Not according to the leader of the conservative movement. They were "merchant marines" who didn't deserve what they got. Read the quote.
Let's just be glad he's not calling American Police officers "murderers" every time they have to shoot someone in self defence. No matter what their age.
They were kids. The story is out, I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently the hijackers, these kids, the merchant marine organizers, Muslim kids, were upset, they wanted to just give the captain back and head home because they were running out of food, they were running out of fuel, they were surrounded by all these US Navy ships, big ships, and they just wanted out of there. That's the story, but then when one of them put a gun to the back of the captain, Mr. Phillips, then bam, bam, bam. There you have it, and three teenagers shot on the high seas at the order of President Obama.
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Idiot.
My hands do not keep up with my thoughts.
So I cannot help but quietly root for the pirates; there is something infuriating about knowing my tax dollars are being used to protect somebody's profits at the expensive of so many jobs.
They were kids. The story is out, I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently the hijackers, these kids, the merchant marine organizers, Muslim kids, were upset, they wanted to just give the captain back and head home because they were running out of food, they were running out of fuel, they were surrounded by all these US Navy ships, big ships, and they just wanted out of there. That's the story, but then when one of them put a gun to the back of the captain, Mr. Phillips, then bam, bam, bam. There you have it, and three teenagers shot on the high seas at the order of President Obama.
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Awwww. The poor pirates. They weren't yet "killing" age. I guess the SEALs should have asked for some I.D. before they shot them. And any time a soldier in Afghanstan has to shoot at a Taliban, he should make sure they're old enough. And when a Police Officer has to respond to a high school massacre, he should avoid killing a teenage gunman.
Was is this idiot smoking?
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