MOMBASA (Kenya) - WHEN news broke that an American captain held by Somali pirates was rescued on Sunday, his crew erupted in cheers and sent red flares screaming into the sky in celebration for a man they hailed as a hero.
Crew members said their ordeal began on Wednesday when the Somali pirates came aboard, firing their guns into the air. Capt Phillips told his crew to lock themselves in a cabin and surrendered himself, they said.
Several of the men said the crew had taken a Somali pirate hostage and had agreed to release him in exchange for the captain, but that something went amiss with the plan.
US Navy snipers opened fire and killed three pirates holding Captain Richard Phillips at gunpoint in a lifeboat off the Somali coast, delivering him unharmed and ending a five-day high-seas hostage drama on Easter Sunday.
Capt Phillips' 19 crewmen, who said the captain offered himself as a hostage to safeguard the crew, gathered on the lower deck of the Maersk Alabama, docked in Mombasa, Kenya. They whistled and pumped their fists in the air.
Crew members fired two bright red flares into the sky from the ship.
'We made it!' shouted ATM 'Zahid' Reza, pumping his fist in the air as he stood among about a dozen crewmen who came out to answer questions from the throng of journalists and television cameras.
Capt Phillips, 53, was not hurt in several minutes of gunfire aboard the enclosed lifeboat. The US Navy said he was resting comfortably on a US warship after receiving a medical exam.
Capt Phillips is believed to have been the first US citizen taken by pirates in 200 years. Piracy has come back in recent years, with Somali pirates staging successful attacks in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean shipping lanes. -- AP
