WORLD> Africa
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WORLD> Africa
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Undeterred Somali pirates hijack 4 more ships
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-14 20:42 In Burlington, Vt., Phillips' wife, Andrea Phillips thanked Obama, who approved the dramatic sniper operation. "With Richard saved, you all just gave me the best Easter ever," she said in a statement.
"Untrained teenagers with heavy weapons," Gates told students and faculty at the Marine Corps War College. "Everybody in the room knows the consequences of that." US officials were now considering whether to bring the fourth pirate, who surrendered shortly before the sniper shootings, to the United States or possibly turn him over to Kenya. Both piracy and hostage-taking carry life prison sentences under US law. The American ship had been carrying food aid bound for Rwanda, Somalia and Uganda when the ordeal began Wednesday hundreds of miles off Somalia's eastern coast. As the pirates clambered aboard and shot in the air, Phillips told his crew to lock themselves in a cabin and surrendered himself to safeguard his men. Phillips was then taken hostage in an enclosed lifeboat that was soon shadowed by three US warships and a helicopter. Navy SEAL snipers on the USS Bainbridge got the go-ahead to fire after one pirate held an AK-47 close to Phillips' back, US defense officials said. The French navy late Monday handed over the bodies of two Somali pirates killed in a hostage rescue operation last week to authorities in Somali's semiautonomous northern region of Puntland, and they were buried.
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