More high drama on high seas as France captures pirate ship

[steven johnson]

Source: Mcclatchy

MOMBASA, Kenya — On another day of high drama in the waters off Somalia, French forces struck Wednesday at what they described as a pirate "mother ship," and captured 11 suspected pirates hours after pirates attacked an American cargo ship with rockets in the second serious attack on a U.S. vessel in a week.
Pirates operating from the coast of Somalia have threatened revenge and stepped up their activities after U.S. Navy SEAL snipers killed three pirates Sunday and rescued American captain Richard Phillips, who'd been taken hostage. His ship, the Maersk Alabama, narrowly escaped capture a few days earlier.
In the Wednesday attack, pirates used automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades against the U.S.-flagged vessel, the Liberty Sun, which like the Alabama, was ferrying food aid into East Africa. They caused damage but no injuries and failed to seize the vessel. The crew barricaded itself in a safe room, much as the Alabama's crew did, according to a crewmember's e-mail obtained by news agencies.

After a Liberian-flagged container ship came under heavy rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire from two pirate speedboats, a French frigate, the Nivose, dispatched two helicopters to the scene, about 500 miles east of the Kenyan port of Mombasa, the French defense ministry said. The helicopters saw the skiffs operating with a 30-foot "mother ship" — often a previously seized vessel used by pirates as a floating base.



Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66270.html

[Captain Hilts]

1. Wait! I thought they were cheese-eating surrender monkeys!?! Guess not!

[HooptieWagon]

3. The Barbary Pirates weren't stopped until the French took Algiers. n/t

[onehandle]

2. But of course...