SOMALI PIRATES PICK A FIGHT WITH THE WRONG SHIP

The crew fought back with flare guns & water cannon and the captain tried to shake the pirates off, but they gave chase and hit the ship with an RPG. After about an hour the 250-meter tanker had slowed enough for them to get a ladder up and storm the deck. The captain set off a distress signal, let the engines run down and barricaded himself and his crew in the engine room.

An Australian AP-3C Orion surveillance aircraft located the tanker and read the speedboats tied alongside as a clear sign of pirates. A radio link was set up between the tanker’s captain and the Russian destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov, which changed course and reached the ship about half a day later.
The pirates, who still had not got into the engine room, noticed the destroyer arrive. Instead of running, they fired on the destroyer’s incoming reconnaissance helicopter, which returned fire at once and killed one of them. The destroyer then put several warning shots across the tanker, at which point the pirates came up on the radio and claimed they had taken hostages.

Once it was confirmed by radio that the tanker’s entire crew was safe in the engine room, around 25 Russian naval infantrymen started crossing to the tanker in fast boats while the destroyer laid down covering fire. After a short firefight the pirates gave up and were taken into custody, and the 23 crew members were able to leave the engine room.

The original plan was to put the pirates on trial in Russia. But there was no uniform law covering those waters at the time, so Moscow decided to let them go. Stripped of weapons and navigation equipment, the pirates were put back on one of their own boats and released about 300 miles off the Somali coast. An hour later they disappeared from radar, which “could mean that they are dead”, as a Russian spokesman put it.

Author’s note: if you like our articles, you can support us with a purchase in our shop (click here). We’re grateful for every bit of support!