While some Somali pirates are threatening to take revenge for two deadly international assaults which disrupted their kidnapping plots the last week, the US military is mulling taking the fight to their bases.
Also, a US congressman's plane was reportedly fired upon by insurgents as he was taking off from Mogadishu.
"The U.S. military is considering attacks on pirate bases on land and aid for the Somali people to help stem ship hijackings off Africa’s east coast, defense officials said," Bloomberg News reports.
The report continues, "The military also is drawing up proposals to aid the fledgling Somalia government to train security forces and develop its own coast guard, said the officials, who requested anonymity. The plans will be presented to the Obama administration as it considers a coordinated U.S. government and international response to piracy, the officials said."
"Somali insurgents fired mortars towards U.S. congressman Donald Payne as he left the Somali capital on a rare visit by a U.S. politician to the anarchic Horn of Africa nation, police said," Reuters reports. "'One mortar landed at the airport when Payne's plane was due to fly and five others after he left and no one was hurt,' Abukar Hassan, a police officer at Mogadishu airport, told Reuters."
"The plane of the congressman was leaving and the mortars started falling. There were no casualties, but the attack was aimed at the congressman. He flew out safely," the AU official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Payne, congressman from New Jersey and a member of the foreign affairs committee, arrived in Mogadishu hours earlier for talks with President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his prime minister on rampant piracy off the country's coast.
