Italian cruise ship thwarts pirate attack

Italian cruise ship thwarts pirate attack

www.cnn.com

(CNN) -- The captain of an Italian cruise ship foiled an attack by pirates off the coast of Somalia on Saturday by ordering his security crew to fire back, Italy's ANSA news agency reported.

Six armed pirates in a speedboat attacked the ship, which had about 1,500 people onboard, ANSA said. They fled after the security crew fired back.

The cruise ship Melody, which is owned by an Italian company, was on its way back to Italy after a cruise, ANSA said.

No one was injured in the attack about 180 miles north of the Seychelles.

Piracy is rampant off the coast of Somalia despite the pr

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This just proves that the pirates are a joke and this situation has been blown out of proportion in the press. I said in a thread I made on this topic a few weeks ago that armed guards on the ships would completely put an end to this problem and lo and behold if a few armed security was able to fend them off.

I imagine its pretty hard to climb a massive ship by rope while its rolling in the sea's, probably even harder to do so when someone is shooting at you while your climbing.

I know certain countries will not allow a armed vessel into its ports, but as far as I can tell that only seems to apply to cargo ships. Why are the cruise ships allowed to have armed security but not cargo ships?

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[edit on 26-4-2009 by FreeSpeaker]

Originally posted by Tentickles
I for one am completely against pirates!
unless they look like this...

The ladies always love Johnny

btw, oil tankers are taken over a lot, just because they are not allowed to have firearms aboard. For obvious reasons.

Ah, but would the none lethal riot equipment not work just aswell? I know I wouldn't want that bean bag cannon thing shot in my face while I was climbing a four story ship in rolling sea's.

I was on a cruise ship last March. On my trip, my travel agent who booked the trip and specializes in cruises also went along. Anyways, over dinner one night the topic of pirate attack came up. My travel agent was able to pull some strings on the boat and got us a tour of the ships armory. I don't know too much about guns, but I knew that they had plenty of them. After seeing that, I will always feel safe on a cruise ship. Plus the head of security on the boat was a scary dude, I wouldn't want to be a pirate facing him.

Hmmmm, Italian cruise ship eh.

And the mafia would just let pirates take over.



Not!