US Navy rescues eight Iraqi fishermen

A US navy frigate on manoeuvres in the Persian Gulf has plucked eight Iraqi fishermen to safety as their boat sank beneath them.

The USS Gary came to the rescue of the Kaptain Muhamad yesterday evening after it issued a mayday call saying it was taking on water and was in danger of sinking.

The 100ft vessel was about 15 miles away in international waters, so the Gary set off to help.

“It was clearly a general mayday, they were pretty desperate,” said Captain Mike Mahon, the officer responsible for the frigate’s squadron.

Mahon was speaking on board the USS Kitty Hawk, one of three US aircraft carriers gathered in the northern Gulf as part of the massive military build-up for a possible war against Iraq.

He said the Iraqi fishermen were in good condition and had not needed any medical attention.

The Gary had initially sent a helicopter, which found the Kaptain Muhamad foundering in seas with winds of between 25-30 knots. But the helicopter could not rescue them because the boat’s small size gave the air crew “no place to work from,” he said.

A small inflatable boat was then launched from the US frigate. Mahon said between four and six sailors usually man such boats, and they would probably have been armed with at least one M-14 rifle and 9mm pistols.

“The vessel was in the process of sinking when the Gary got the mayday call,” Mahon said. “By the time (the inflatable) got over there it was in the process of capsizing and as they were taking the last people off the boat, it sank.”

Two of the fishermen were rescued from the water, the last of them at about 10pm (1900 Irish time), he said.

Mahon said the Iraqis were searched and taken on board the Gary, where they would be held in isolation and under observation, but probably not locked up, he said.

The sunken boat’s captain requested he and his crew be returned to Iraq, Mahon said. The process to do that was not clear, he added, and would probably involve sending them to a third country, which would then return them to Iraq.