<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>April 12, 2009
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Somalian pirates stalked <!--10 min-->
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'He saved our lives!' second mate Ken Quinn (second, from left), of Bradenton, Florida, declared from the ship deck. 'He's a hero.' -- PHOTO: AFP
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"-->MOMBASA (Kenya) - US WARSHIPS and helicopters stalked a lifeboat holding an American sea captain and his four Somali captors on Sunday, while his crew briefed FBI agents about how they fought off the pirates who boarded their ship.
Nineteen American sailors guarded by US Navy Seals reached safe harbor in Kenya's northeast port of Mombasa on Saturday night, exhilarated by freedom but mourning the absence of Capt. Richard Phillips, who sacrificed himself as a hostage to save them.
<TABLE width=200 align=left valign="top"><TBODY><TR><TD class=padr8><!-- Vodcast --><!-- Background Story --><STYLE type=text/css> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </STYLE>Recent pirates attacks
ON FRIDAY, the French navy freed a sailboat seized off Somalia last week by other pirates, but one of the five hostages was killed.
Early Saturday, the pirates holding Phillips in the lifeboat fired a few shots at a small US Navy vessel that had approached, a US military official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>'He saved our lives!' second mate Ken Quinn, of Bradenton, Florida, declared from the ship deck. 'He's a hero.'
ATM Reza, a crew member who said he was first to see the pirates board the US-flagged Maersk Alabama on Wednesday. He described how the bandits 'came on with hooks and ropes and were firing in the air.' He was responding to a throng of reporters shouting questions from shore about the ordeal that began with Somali pirates hauling themselves up from a small boat bobbing on the surface of the Indian Ocean far below.
As the pirates shot in the air, Phillips, 53, of Underhill, Vermont, told his crew to lock themselves in a cabin and surrendered himself to safeguard his men, crew members said.
Phillips was still held hostage in an enclosed lifeboat Sunday by four pirates being closely watched by US warships and a helicopter in an increasingly tense standoff. The lifeboat is out of fuel and drifting.
A Pentagon spokesman said on Saturday night that negotiations to free Phillips were continuing. Talks began on Thursday with the captain of the USS Bainbridge talking to the pirates under instruction from FBI hostage negotiators on board the US destroyer.
But The New York Times reported the talks broke down Saturday, quoting Somali officials as blaming a US insistence that the pirates must be arrested. It was not immediately possible to verify that report.
It was not clear where the lifeboat was on Sunday. A pirate who says he is associated with the gang holding Phillips, Ahmed Mohamed Nur, told The Associated Press that the pirates say 'helicopters continue to fly over their heads in the daylight and in the night they are under the focus of a spotlight from a warship.' But Nur said satellite phone calls with the pirates had not established the position of the boat: 'We do not know where exactly the boat is.'
He spoke by satellite phone from Harardhere, a port and pirate stronghold where a fisherman said helicopters flew over the town Sunday morning and a warship was looming on the horizon. The fisherman, Abdi Sheikh Muse, said that could be an indication the lifeboat may be near to shore. The US Navy has assumed the pirates would try to get their hostage to shore, where they can hide him on Somalia's lawless soil and be in a stronger position to negotiate a ransom. Three US warships were within easy reach of the lifeboat on Saturday, but fears of endangering Phillips' life limit their ability to use their overwhelming firepower. -- AP
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Somalian pirates stalked <!--10 min-->
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
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'He saved our lives!' second mate Ken Quinn (second, from left), of Bradenton, Florida, declared from the ship deck. 'He's a hero.' -- PHOTO: AFP
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"-->MOMBASA (Kenya) - US WARSHIPS and helicopters stalked a lifeboat holding an American sea captain and his four Somali captors on Sunday, while his crew briefed FBI agents about how they fought off the pirates who boarded their ship.
Nineteen American sailors guarded by US Navy Seals reached safe harbor in Kenya's northeast port of Mombasa on Saturday night, exhilarated by freedom but mourning the absence of Capt. Richard Phillips, who sacrificed himself as a hostage to save them.
<TABLE width=200 align=left valign="top"><TBODY><TR><TD class=padr8><!-- Vodcast --><!-- Background Story --><STYLE type=text/css> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </STYLE>Recent pirates attacks
ON FRIDAY, the French navy freed a sailboat seized off Somalia last week by other pirates, but one of the five hostages was killed.
Early Saturday, the pirates holding Phillips in the lifeboat fired a few shots at a small US Navy vessel that had approached, a US military official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>'He saved our lives!' second mate Ken Quinn, of Bradenton, Florida, declared from the ship deck. 'He's a hero.'
ATM Reza, a crew member who said he was first to see the pirates board the US-flagged Maersk Alabama on Wednesday. He described how the bandits 'came on with hooks and ropes and were firing in the air.' He was responding to a throng of reporters shouting questions from shore about the ordeal that began with Somali pirates hauling themselves up from a small boat bobbing on the surface of the Indian Ocean far below.
As the pirates shot in the air, Phillips, 53, of Underhill, Vermont, told his crew to lock themselves in a cabin and surrendered himself to safeguard his men, crew members said.
Phillips was still held hostage in an enclosed lifeboat Sunday by four pirates being closely watched by US warships and a helicopter in an increasingly tense standoff. The lifeboat is out of fuel and drifting.
A Pentagon spokesman said on Saturday night that negotiations to free Phillips were continuing. Talks began on Thursday with the captain of the USS Bainbridge talking to the pirates under instruction from FBI hostage negotiators on board the US destroyer.
But The New York Times reported the talks broke down Saturday, quoting Somali officials as blaming a US insistence that the pirates must be arrested. It was not immediately possible to verify that report.
It was not clear where the lifeboat was on Sunday. A pirate who says he is associated with the gang holding Phillips, Ahmed Mohamed Nur, told The Associated Press that the pirates say 'helicopters continue to fly over their heads in the daylight and in the night they are under the focus of a spotlight from a warship.' But Nur said satellite phone calls with the pirates had not established the position of the boat: 'We do not know where exactly the boat is.'
He spoke by satellite phone from Harardhere, a port and pirate stronghold where a fisherman said helicopters flew over the town Sunday morning and a warship was looming on the horizon. The fisherman, Abdi Sheikh Muse, said that could be an indication the lifeboat may be near to shore. The US Navy has assumed the pirates would try to get their hostage to shore, where they can hide him on Somalia's lawless soil and be in a stronger position to negotiate a ransom. Three US warships were within easy reach of the lifeboat on Saturday, but fears of endangering Phillips' life limit their ability to use their overwhelming firepower. -- AP
