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Kenya (AP) — A U.S. Navy destroyer helped sailors who retook control
of their vessel Tuesday in a deadly battle with pirates after the
North Korean-flagged ship was hijacked off Somalia, the American
military said.
A helicopter flew from the USS James E. Williams to investigate a
phoned-in tip of a hijacked vessel, and demanded by bridge-to-bridge
radio that the pirates give up their weapons, the military said in a
statement.

The crew of the Dai Hong Dan then overwhelmed the hijackers, leaving
two pirates dead, according to preliminary reports, and five captured,
the military said.

Three seriously injured crewmembers were brought aboard the Williams,
the statement said. The pirates remained on the Dai Hong Dan, which
the crew was returning to the port of Mogadishu.

A U.S. Navy spokeswoman said piracy was a scourge in Somalia's waters,
and American ships were available to intercede.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: PM | Somalia | Mogadishu | Somali | US Navy |
Horn of Africa | Somali government | Andrew Mwangura
"When we get a distress call, we help," said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson of
the U.S. Fifth Fleet told The Associated Press by telephone from
Manama, Bahrain.

Geoff Morrell, a spokesman for the U.S. Defense Department, said
piracy off the Horn of Africa is a concern because "you're talking
about an area that has seen greater terrorist involvement."

It's logical, Morrell said, that the military would want to know "what
is being transported on the high seas and who is out there operating
and if they have nothing but the best intentions in mind."

Andrew Mwangura, program coordinator of the Seafarers Assistance
Program, said an estimated 22 crewmembers were aboard the North
Korea-flagged vessel that gunmen seized late Monday in Somali waters.
His group independently monitors piracy in the region. Workers at the
Mogadishu port said the vessel delivered a load of sugar from India.

An international watchdog reported this month that pirate attacks
worldwide jumped 14% in the first nine months of 2007, with the
biggest increases in the poorly policed waters of Somalia and Nigeria.

Reported attacks in Somali waters rose to 26, up from eight a year
earlier, the London-based International Maritime Bureau said through
its piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The U.S. Navy said ships in a coalition monitoring the waters near
Somalia were also following a hijacked Japanese vessel in those
waters, and that four other boats are still controlled by pirates near
Somalia.

Somalia has had 16 years of violence and anarchy, and is now led by a
government battling to establish authority even in the capital. Its
coasts are virtually unpoliced.

Piracy off Somalia increased this year after Ethiopian forces backing
Somali government troops ousted an Islamic militia in December, said
Mwangura.

During the six months that the Council of Islamic Courts ruled most of
southern Somalia, where Somali pirates are based, piracy abated,
Mwangura said.

At one point, the Islamic group said it was sending scores of fighters
to crack down on pirates there. Islamic fighters even stormed a
hijacked, UAE-registered ship and recaptured it after a gunbattle in
which pirates — but no crewmembers — were reportedly wounded.

The Somali capital has become especially unsafe in recent days, with
fighting over the weekend between an Islamic militia and government
forces backed by Ethiopian troops. The U.N. refugee agency said
Tuesday around 36,000 people have been driven from their homes in what
locals said was the worst fighting in months, adding to the tens of
thousands who fled the capital earlier this year.

Somalia's president named Salim Aliyow Ibrow, a former deputy prime
minister, as caretaker prime minister, a day after the outgoing
premier lost a power struggle in the government and resigned.

By law, President Abdullahi Yusuf must name a permanent prime minister
within 30 days of the resignation.

The new prime minister struck a conciliatory tone Tuesday, calling for
an end to the country's crisis

"The time of fighting has ended, and we are in the season of
reconciliation," he told The Associated Press.

But hundreds more families around the city's main market were
preparing to flee the capital on Tuesday, loading trucks, buses and
donkey carts with their belongings, said Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman
for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

"They're really rather confused about where to go: whether to stay,
whether to leave the city entirely or whether to relocate to another
part of the city," she told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland.





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