The American ship captain held hostage by pirates for days off the
coast of Somalia arrived safely in the Kenyan port of Mombassa Thursday.
Richard
Phillips was aboard the USS Bainbridge, the ship that rescued him on
Sunday when Navy sharpshooters shot three of his pirate captors.
He
just missed reuniting with his crew, who arrived back home in the U.S.
hours earlier. The USS Bainbridge diverted to respond to a distress
signal from the U.S. cargo ship Liberty Sun, the second American ship
attacked by Somali pirates in a week.
The crew of the Liberty
Sun successfully warded off the attack and arrived safely in Kenya with
the ships' supply of food aid Wednesday.
Responding to the spate
of recent attacks, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged new
efforts to track down and freeze the assets of Somali pirates.
Clinton
says pirates are using ransom money from hijacking ships to buy
increasingly sophisticated weapons. She says the U.S. needs to track
the money like it does with drug traffickers and terrorist groups.
Another
11 pirates were captured by a French military ship on Wednesday off the
coast of Kenya. French officials said they followed the pirates after
helping stop an attack on a Liberian-registered vessel.
Various pirate groups are now holding at least 16 ships with more than 250 crew members.
The U.S., China and other countries have been conducting naval patrols off Somalia in an effort to stem the hijackings.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
