A cargo ship loaded with humanitarian aid was headed to Kenya under US Navy escort yesterday Wednesday after escaping Somali pirates firing grenades and automatic weapons, the second unsuccessful hijacking attempt of a US freighter in a week, officials said.
In defiance of US President Barack Obama’s vow to halt their banditry, pirates have seized four vessels and about 60 hostages off the Horn of Africa since Sunday’s rescue of a US freighter captain from the drifting lifeboat where he was held hostage. If they had been successful on Tuesday, the MV Liberty Sun would have been the fifth.
The Liberty Sun’s crew was not injured in the attack but the vessel sustained unspecified damage, owner Liberty Maritime Corp said in a statement on Tuesday night.
“We are under attack by pirates, we are being hit by rockets.
Also bullets,” crewman Thomas Urbik, 26, wrote his mother in an e-mail on Tuesday. “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.”
It was not immediately clear what happened next. Urbik sent a follow-up e-mail “that said he was safe and they had a naval escort taking them in,” his mother, Katy Urbik, said.
A US Navy destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, responded to the attack, but the pirates had departed by the time it arrived around six hours later, Navy Captain Jack Hanzlik said.
The Bainbridge is the same destroyer from which Navy SEAL snipers killed three pirates holding Captain Richard Phillips captive aboard the powerless lifeboat. A fourth pirate surrendered. Phillips had been held captive for five days after exchanging himself to safeguard his crew during a thwarted hijacking of the Alabama by the pirates last week.
The Bainbridge was carrying Phillips to Kenya when it was called to respond to the attack on the Liberty Sun. He was to return home to the US yesterday, after reuniting with his 19-man crew in the port city of Mombasa, the shipping company Maersk Line Ltd said.
The Liberty Sun, with its crew of about 20 Americans, was carrying humanitarian aid to Mombasa, Hanzlik said.
“We commend the entire crew for its professionalism and poise under fire,” Liberty Maritime of Lake Success, New York, said in the statement.
Katy Urbik, said she was “very relieved and grateful to God for protecting him and to our Navy, and that we come from a country that can respond like that and protect our citizens.”
The brigands are grabbing more ships and hostages to show they would not be intimidated by Obama’s pledge to confront the high-seas bandits, a pirate based in the Somali coastal town of Harardhere said.
“Our latest hijackings are meant to show that no one can deter us from protecting our waters from the enemy because we believe in dying for our land,” Omar Dahir Idle said by telephone.
After a lull at the beginning of the year because of rough seas, the pirates since the end of February have attacked at least 78 ships, hijacked 19 of them and hold 16 vessels with more than 300 hostages from a dozen or so countries.
Also See: Increasingly impotent
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese