U.S. Cargo Ship Evades Somali Pirate Attack

MOMBASA, Kenya-Defiant Somali pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at another U.S. cargo ship on Tuesday but failed to hijack it, officials said, just days after Navy SEALs rescued an American hostage after an earlier unsuccessful hijacking.The brazen midday attack on the MV Liberty Sun in international waters off the African coast is further evidence that Somali pirates are back to business as usual.Pirates have seized four other ships with 60 hostages since sharpshooters killed three gunmen holding American freighter captain Richard Phillips."No one can deter us," one bandit boasted.The Liberty Sun's American crew was not injured but the vessel sustained unspecified damage in the attack, owner Liberty Maritime Corp. said in a statement 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 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, but Urbik's 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 U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, responded to the attack but the pirates had departed by the time it arrived some six hours later, Navy Capt. Jack Hanzlik said.The Bainbridge is the same destroyer from which snipers killed the three pirates holding Phillips captive aboard a drifting lifeboat for five days. The Bainbridge was carrying Phillips to Kenya when it was called to respond to the attack on the Liberty Sun.The Liberty Sun, with its crew of about 20 Americans, was carrying humanitarian aid to Mombasa, Kenya, Hanzlik said. It continued on its way to Kenya after the attack under Navy escort, the company said."We commend the entire crew for its professionalism and poise under fire," Liberty Maritime, of Lake Success, New York, said in the statement. President Philip J. Shapiro and chief financial officer Dale B. Moses declined to comment further.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 President Barack Obama's pledge to confront the high-seas bandits, according to a pirate based in the Somali coastal town of Harardhere. "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 told The Associated Press by telephone."Our guns do not fire water. I am sure we will avenge."On Monday, Obama vowed to "halt the rise of piracy" without saying exactly how the U.S. and allies would do it.The pirates have vowed vengeance for five colleagues slain by U.S. and French forces in two hostage rescues since Friday.The top U.S. military officer, Adm. Michael Mullen, said he takes the pirates' threats seriously, but "we're very well prepared to deal with anything like that." Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke on ABC's "Good Morning America."
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