Posted on 04/15/2009 3:32:07 AM PDT by Scanian
Somali pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at a US cargo ship yesterday but failed to hijack it.
None of the 20 American crewmen on The Liberty Sun was injured in the brazen midday attack in international waters off Somalia, but the vessel sustained unspecified damage, according to its owner, Liberty Maritime of Long Island.
"We are under attack by pirates, we are being hit by rockets. Also bullets," crewman Thomas Urbik 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."
It was not immediately clear what happened next, but 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 Navy destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, responded to the attack, but the pirates had departed by the time it arrived some six hours later.
The Bainbridge is the ship from which Navy SEAL snipers on Sunday killed three pirates holding Maersk Alabama Capt. Richard Phillips captive aboard a lifeboat.
The Bainbridge had been carrying Phillips to Kenya.
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."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Just a bunch of kids out for a good time.
Sarcasm.
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