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Italian Cruise Ship Fires on Pirates

By NICOLE WINFIELD
,
AP
posted: 5 HOURS 23 MINUTES AGO
comments: 2360
filed under: Pirates News, World News
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NAIROBI, Kenya (April 26) - The small white skiff approached the Italian cruise ship Melody after dinnertime as it sailed north of the Seychelles, the pirates firing wildly toward the 1,500 passengers and crew on board.
What the pirates didn't expect was that, in the darkness, the crew would fire back.
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In a new twist to the increasing scourge of Somali pirate hijackings, the private Israeli security forces aboard the MSC Cruises ocean liner fired on the pirates Saturday with pistols and water hoses, preventing them from clambering aboard, the company's director Domenico Pellegrino said.
"It was an emergency operation," Pellegrino told The Associated Press. "They didn't expect such a quick response. They were surprised."
Passengers were ordered to return to their cabins and the lights on deck were switched off. The massive vessel then sailed on in darkness, eventually escorted by a Spanish warship to make sure it made it to its next port.
"It felt like we were in war," the ship's Italian Commander, Ciro Pinto, told Italian state radio.
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None of the roughly 1,000 passengers were hurt and by Sunday afternoon they were back out on deck sunning themselves, Pellegrino said.
But analysts say the unprecedented use of weapons by the ship's security force could make things worse in the pirate-infested waters off the Horn of Africa, where over 100 ships were attacked last year by Somalia-based pirates. In nearly all the hijackings, the crews were unharmed and were let go after a ransom was paid.
"There is a consensus in the shipping industry that, in the vast majority of cases, having an armed guard is not a good idea. The No. 1 reason is that it could cause an escalation of violence and pirates that have so far been trying to scare ships could now start to kill people," said Roger Middleton, an expert on Somali piracy at London-based think tank Chatham House.
Other experts disagree, saying piracy off the coast of modern-day Somalia is unique in that the pirates are most interested in human cargo.
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"Their business model, if you will, has been to not cross a line which would bring the whole weight of the world upon them. They want to seize hostages and ransom those hostages. So the likelihood that they would escalate violence is unlikely," said Africa expert Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University.
He argued that arming ships is not a sustainable solution, given that an estimated 20,000 ships pass through the Gulf of Aden each year.
"For the Melody, you're talking about 1,000 passengers and 500 crew members, so maybe for 1,500 people paying to have security on board makes both economical and tactical sense — but when you're dealing with ordinary cargo ships it's very different," he said.
Pellegrino said MSC Cruises had Israeli private security forces on all their ships because they were the best. He said the pistols on board were at the discretion of the commander and the security forces.
The attack occurred near the Seychelles and about 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of Somalia, according to the anti-piracy flotilla headquarters of the Maritime Security Center Horn of Africa. The Melody was traveling up Africa's east coast, from Durban, South Africa to Genoa, Italy.
Pinto said the pirates fired "like crazy" with automatic weapons, slightly damaging the liner, when they approached in a small, white Zodiac-like boat.
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"After about four or five minutes, they tried to put a ladder up," Pinto told Sky TG24. "They were starting to climb up but we reacted, we started to fire ourselves. When they saw our fire, and also the water from the water hoses that we started to spray toward the Zodiac, they left and went away ... They followed us for a bit, about 20 minutes," he said.
Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet, noted that the distance from the Somali coast — 500 miles — was a sign of the pirates' increasing skill. Until last year, the majority of pirate attacks occurred within 100 miles of the Somali shore but he said that last fall there had been a "definite shift in their tactical capabilities."
"It's not unheard of to have attacks off the coast of the Seychelles; we've even had some in the past month," he said. "But at the same time, it is a sign that they are moving further and further off the Somali coast."
In a separate incident Sunday, the Yemen Interior Ministry said Yemeni coast guards clashed with pirates and killed two of them when they tried to hijack a Yemeni tanker in the Gulf of Aden. And the Turkish cruiser Ariva 3, with two British and four Japanese crew members aboard, survived a pirate attack near the Yemeni island of Jabal Zuqar, said Ali el-Awlaqi, head of the Yemeni El-Awlaqi Marine company said.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Navy shot and killed three pirates and took a fourth into custody after a five-day standoff in the waters off the Somali coast where they hijacked the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama.
Saturday's exchange of fire between the Melody and pirates was one of the first reported between pirates and a nonmilitary ship. Civilian shipping and passenger ships have generally avoided arming crewmen or hiring armed security for reasons of safety, liability and compliance with the rules of the different countries where they dock.
It was not the first attack on a cruise liner, however. In November, pirates opened fire on a U.S.-operated ship, the M/S Nautica, which was taking 650 passengers and 400 crew members on a monthlong luxury cruise from Rome to Singapore. The liner was able to outrun the pirates. And in early April a tourist yacht was hijacked by Somali pirates near the Seychelles just after having dropped off its cargo of tourists.
Winfield reported from Rome. Associated Press reporters Ahmed al-Haj in Yemen and Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.
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Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2009-04-26 06:15:22
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OOOOOOOOOPINION

09:53 PMApr 27 2009

Bet the pirates were like holy sh*t....THEY ARE SHOOTING BACK!!!!!......what a buz kill for this little pirates...now word is spreading around the pirate camps in somalia........makes me wonder what will happen next....hmmmm

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Captjoe20

09:53 PMApr 27 2009

The question i have is why only hand guns? why not a 50 cal in front and back of ship, then all you have to do is have some of your crew trained on how to use it and it would cost next to nothing. when ship enters ports the gun is stowed away. what is so hard about that???

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Garachki

09:53 PMApr 27 2009

GiveupLetGod, that's what happens when you come in the middle of a conversation and you don't know what you're talking about.

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Garachki

09:51 PMApr 27 2009

CLINEARMAN, my tax dollars help you every day, buddy. If you drive down a state road, go to the airport, if you've ever gone to a library or a museum in your state. Those projects get federal dollars. Everybody benefits from other's tax dollars. So, why focus on people who need assistance with food and shelter? Do you want to be on assistance and live below the poverty line? Is that your goal in life? You're not successful in a vacuum. If you work for or own a business, you are successful because of the people that consume your product. So, don't give that nobody's ever done anything for you crap. It's not true.

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Cgllaernk

09:51 PMApr 27 2009

Garachki 09:34 PMApr 27 2009 CLINEARMAN, once again, you are incorrect. The biggest driver of the national debt is healthcare costs. ************* And all this time the liberals have been saying that the "illegal war" is the biggest cause of our national debt. Which is it? LOL

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GiveupLetGod

09:49 PMApr 27 2009

Cgllaernk, oh I misunderstood...we're suppsed to INVADE a country illegally. Demand that they us oil for free. Then, what? Leave them to fend for themselves after we've depleted all their resources? Well, that's the American way, I guess. ~~ What the heck are you talking about? When did we ever demand we get oil for free? Where is it now? If oil was our incentive for going into Iraq why don't we have control over it? I guess this is what you're talking about, I really don't know.

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RaspberriesO

09:48 PMApr 27 2009

I have a feeling that if I ask for the showing time of a certain movie, at a certain theater, I'd be given an answer. It would be wrong --- like most of what the Shell answer man has posted. LOL I'm popping in and out but still amused at the audacity of lies, dissembling, and spin.

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ItlnGrl117

09:48 PMApr 27 2009

I have a question, for anyone who understands the situation better than I do. Do we have Clinton to blame for this? It was his moral cowardice that made us withdraw from Somalia when we were there, after a single crappy mission. How has that influenced Somalia since that time, and could the presence of US military have made things different?Oh, yeah. Italy and Israel. My two fave countries after the good ole' USA. God bless.

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VillageRty

09:48 PMApr 27 2009

Tlee47 - Oh, what a sad liberal you are!! "Since they have no other way" They have plenty of ways - in Florida our orange groves were frozen out, but we had to retool our own lives to make a living (to feed our families) in other occupations. And, believe me, they have been the worst polluters of their own waters - you have been listening to Gore to long! Do NOT try to justify asking for millions in ransom as fellows "just trying to feed their families" .

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KMarsh6100

09:46 PMApr 27 2009

Maybe the ports in these different countries will start to realize that the ships need to be armed. Maybe the cruise lines should stop going to these countries. Money talks. This with a few highly trained individuals with rocket launchers to blow the pirates out of the water would work.

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