Navy-contracted ship opens fire in Suez Canal - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Navy-contracted ship opens fire in Suez Canal

SUEZ, Egypt — Dozens of angry mourners on Tuesday buried an Egyptian man they say was killed by shots fired from a U.S. ship contracted to the Navy as it passed through the Suez Canal. U.S. officials said the ship only fired warning shots toward approaching motorboats but that they have no word anyone was killed.

The incident occurred Monday evening, when the merchant cargo ship Global Patriot entered the canal from the Red Sea and was approached by some of the small motor boats that ply the waterway buying and selling goods with ships, said both Egyptian and U.S. accounts of the incident.

The Navy has been very careful about the activities of small boats near its warships ever since an al-Qaida suicide attack by an explosives-packed motorboat on the destroyer Cole in Yemen killed 17 sailors in 2000. Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, said the same rules of engagement as warships apply for ships under Navy contract.

“The boats were hailed and warned by a native Arabic speaker using a bullhorn to warn them to turn away. A warning flare was then fired,” the U.S. Embassy in Cairo said in a statement. “One small boat continued to approach the ship and received two sets of warning shots 20-30 yards in front of the bow. All shots were accounted for as they entered the water.”

A Navy security team that was aboard the ship fired the warning shots, said Lt. Nathan Christensen, the Fifth Fleet deputy spokesman.

The Navy said in a statement that it was investigating the incident, but that initial reports from the ship indicated there were no casualties.

But an Egyptian security official at the canal said one man was shot dead in the small boat and that the three other men with him were wounded. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. The Egyptian state news agency MENA also reported one man was killed.

The slain man — Mohammed Fouad, a 27-year-old father of two — was buried Tuesday in the canal city of Suez. “I saw the body. The bullet entered his heart and went out the other side,” said Abbas al-Amrikani, head of the local seaman’s union to The Associated Press.

After the burial, dozens of friends and family members converged on the two-story home where Fouad’s family and those of his brothers and sisters lived together. Women in black wailed and cried while some of the men buried their heads in their arms in disbelief.

They railed against the Americans — as well as the Egyptian government, which they said did not do enough to stand up for them.

“There were no warning shots from the ship, they just turned a spotlight on it and started firing immediately,” said Abdullah Fouad, the slain man’s brother, who was not on the boat but talked to three men who were. “He was shot while trying to take cover.

“We expect this from foreigners, especially Americans who hate us, but we thought our government would help us,” he said.

“If we were protected and people knew there was someone to defend us and stand up for us, they would not have dared gun us down like animals,” said Fouad’s sister Manal.

Mohammed Fouad’s wife Saadah Abdel-Al was still in shock and could only numbly recall that her husband had been a hard worker. “He went to work every morning, he was not a troublemaker and took care of his family well,” she said.

The victim worked on the small boats selling cigarettes and other products to ships crossing the canal. These waterborne merchants know not to approach military vessels but the Global Patriot looked like an ordinary freighter, said Abdullah Fouad. “Normally we go nowhere near military ships,” he said.

Hormoz Shayegan, vice president of Global Container Lines Limited, the New York-based company that owns the Global Patriot, said the ship “does not have any markings to suggest it is a military ship or anything like that.” He said the crew on the vessel was unarmed.

Robertson said the Navy team on board took “the appropriate steps to take those measured steps to warn the vessels that were getting too close.”

“We are very conscious of being in heavily trafficked areas and we as professional mariners try to keep people from getting too close,” she told The Associated Press by phone from Bahrain.

On Jan. 6, Navy ships nearly opened fire on armed Iranian speedboats that repeatedly charged their convoy in the cramped waters of the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz.

There was no immediate comment from the Egyptian government on the incident. In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. was working with Egypt “to understand exactly what happened here and make sure we have good, clear, open communications so you don’t have a repeat of these kinds of incidents.”

He said he expected U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Egyptian Defense Minister Mohammed Hussein Tantawi to discuss the incident in a closed-door meeting at the State Department later Tuesday.

Egyptian officials confirmed that the ship was now continuing its journey through the canal and expected to arrive at Port Said, at the canal’s Mediterranean end, by nightfall.

About 7.5 percent of world sea trade passes through the canal, which at its narrowest is 120 meters wide and is divided into two 60-meter-wide lanes. The canal is a major source of foreign currency for Egypt.