US warship 'opens fire in Suez' Breaking News

Containers of new munitions are unloaded from the Motor Vessel Global Patriot ship during the Turbo Containerized Ammunition Distribution System exercise June 22. The munitions were for all services in Okinawa. The following day many containers filled with older munitions were onloaded to be shipped back to military installations in the U.S. for storage. U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Reynaldo Ramon

MV Global Patriot, a SEALOGPAC voyage-chartered container ship, discharged 654 containers of ammunition at Concord Naval Weapons Station, Calif., in September, and loaded 58 containers and 48 pieces of break-bulk equipment for a Patriot missile defense battery destined for Okinawa.

The U.S. Navy is very careful about the activities of small boats near their war ships ever since the 2000 suicide attack by a motor boat on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen killed 17 sailors. A U.S. Navy security team was aboard the cargo ship.

Small boats selling cigarettes and other products often swarm the civilian ships moving through the canal. These waterborne merchants know not to approach military vessels but the "Global Patriot" looked like a civilian vessel, said the security official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

"We are very conscious of being in heavily trafficked areas and we as professional mariners try to keep people from getting too close," Fifth Fleet spokeswoman Cmdr. Lydia Robertson told The Associated Press by phone from Bahrain. "Our team did take the appropriate steps to take those measured steps to warn the vessels that were getting too close."

Robertson, who noted that a Navy security team was on the vessel, said that the same rules of engagement applied for war ships as for those under contract.