Russian warship wins shootout with Somali pirates, rescues sailors
(Read article summary)A Russian warship rescued 23 Russian sailors at dawn today. The men were taken hostage Wednesday when their oil tanker was hijacked by Somali pirates.
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The crew of a Russian warship engaged in a firefight with Somali pirates during a dawn raid on Thursday, and successfully released 23 seamen who had been taken hostage aboard an oil tanker a day earlier.
The vessel was hijacked Wednesday morning in the Gulf of Aden while it was en route from Sudan to China carrying 86,000 tons of crude oil worth $52 million.
The raid against the Liberian-flagged tanker, the Moscow University, occurred after the crew locked themselves in the ship's rudder compartment, according to The New York Times.
[Commander John Harbour, a spokesman for the European Union Naval Force] said a helicopter from the Russian destroyer, the Marshal Shaposhnikov, approached the tanker “and was fired upon by pirates.” The destroyer, knowing the merchant crew was locked down and safe, turned its guns onto the superstructure of the tanker as the pirates put up resistance. The Russian sailors offered a “robust” response, Commander Harbour said, and the pirates, thought to be from Somalia, eventually surrendered to a boarding party.
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