Navy Warships Fire on Suspected Pirates Off Somalia, Killing One

Two U.S. warships opened fire on suspected pirates in a small boat in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia yesterday when the pirates brandished shoulder-fired rocket launchers at the ships as they approached, the Navy said.

One of the pirates was killed and five were wounded, the Navy said. Twelve suspects were taken into custody. Sailors worked into the night to quell a fire on the suspected pirate craft ignited by the warships' machine guns. No Americans were injured.

Cmdr. Jeff Breslau, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy Central Command at Bahrain, said the USS Cape St. George, a guided-missile cruiser, and the USS Gonzalez, a guided-missile destroyer, were conducting security patrols in international waters off Somalia's central coast when they spotted a small utility boat towing a pair of skiffs.

"All three were wooden boats," Breslau said in a telephone interview from Bahrain. "They were about 25 miles off the coast and heading west, toward shore." Breslau said the incident occurred at 5:40 a.m. local time.

He said the waters off Somalia, a country that has been in turmoil for the past 15 years, are infested with pirates, seaborne armed robbers who board any boat or ship they can approach and rob the crew at gunpoint.

"A lot of it is targets of opportunity," he said. "They'll take over fishing or merchant vessels, then head back to territorial waters where they demand a ransom." Under international law, watercraft in territorial waters cannot be easily boarded by foreign flagged ships.

Breslau said Cape St. George and Gonzalez, both based in Norfolk, were part of Task Force 150, which oversees security operations and interdictions at the Arabian Sea approaches to the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Oman. "The main focus," he said, "is to prevent terrorists from using the sea."

Breslau said the suspected pirate vessel was less than 40 feet long and either had two smaller skiffs in tow or was leading them toward shore. Cape St. George is 567 feet long, and Gonzalez is 505 feet long. Both ships are armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles and an arsenal of other weapons.

The warships were maneuvering to come alongside the suspect boat in preparation for boarding and search when the pirates opened fire with automatic rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, Breslau said. Sailors manning machine guns on board the warships returned fire, he added.

"There is one confirmed dead and five injured," Breslau said. "We took 12 people into custody, including the injured men." He said the firefight ignited the suspects' vessel, but sailors were working to put out the blaze in hopes of salvaging documents or other intelligence materials.