COPENHAGEN: A Danish naval patrol killed four pirates in an exchange of fire in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Nigeria, Denmark’s armed forces said on Thursday.
“No Danish soldiers were injured, but five pirates were shot,” the military said.
“Four of the pirates died. One was injured,” it added.
The incident occurred on Wednesday when the frigate Esbern Snare, which has been patrolling the area since early November, attempted to board the pirate boat.
The Danish forces fired warning shots, and the pirates immediately fired back.
“The Danish soldiers acted in self-defense and returned fire,” the statement said.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a news conference that the soldiers’ intervention had “probably prevented concrete pirate attacks against vessels in the region.”
Frederiksen, who had been scheduled to visit the Danish ship later Thursday during a visit to Ghana, said the Esbern Snare had “made an important and significant contribution to security in the Gulf of Guinea.
The head of the federation of Danish shipowners, Anne Steffensen, praised the intervention.
“The presence of Danish soldiers is absolutely necessary and, even if this appears harsh, piracy has a price,” she said.
After the shooting, the pirate ship sank and the eight pirates were brought aboard the frigate, where a seriously injured one of their number was treated.
A piracy hotspot stretching 5,700 kilometers (3,540 miles) from Senegal to Angola, the Gulf of Guinea saw 195 attacks in 2020.
The same year, 130 of 135 hostage takings at sea occurred in the region, according to the International Maritime Office.
The Danish helicopter-equipped frigate and its 175 sailors “are fulfilling an important task by protecting Danish and other commercial vessels in the region,” Defense Minister Trine Bramsen told news agency Ritzau.
Copenhagen in March announced it was sending the vessel to patrol the zone, where some 40 Danish ships operate daily.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is currently in neighboring Ghana and due to visit the Esbern Snare.
Danish naval forces kill four pirates in the Gulf of Guinea
https://arab.news/6ptfw
Danish naval forces kill four pirates in the Gulf of Guinea
- Danish forces on the frigate the Esbern Snare fired warning shots, and the pirates immediately fired back
- A piracy hotspot stretching 5,700 kilometers from Senegal to Angola, the Gulf of Guinea saw 195 attacks in 2020
Fatal ICE shooting of Minneapolis activist sets stage for national protests
*
Over 1,000 ‘ICE Out’ rallies planned across US
*
Minnesota launches inquiry separate from federal probe
*
Agent’s own video heightens contradictory accounts of shooting
MINNEAPOLIS: Civil liberties and migrant-rights groups called for nationwide rallies on Saturday to protest the fatal shooting of an activist in Minnesota by a US immigration agent, as state authorities opened their own investigation of the killing.
Protest organizers said more than 1,000 weekend events were planned across the country demanding an end to large-scale deployments of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ordered by President Donald Trump, mostly to cities led by Democratic politicians.
Minneapolis became a major flashpoint of the Republican president’s militarized deportation roundups on Wednesday, when an ICE officer shot and killed a 37-year-old mother of three, Renee Good, behind the wheel of her car on a residential street.
The violence came soon after some 2,000 federal officers were dispatched to Minneapolis in what ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, called the “largest DHS operation ever.” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, condemned the deployment as a “reckless” example of “governance by reality TV.”
CONFLICTING NARRATIVES OF KILLING
On Friday night, throngs of demonstrators staged a “noise protest” outside a Minneapolis hotel believed to be lodging a visiting contingent of ICE agents.
Video posted by activists on social media showed protesters, some wearing brightly colored inflatable costumes, creating a din by beating on drums, banging pots and pans, yelling through bullhorns and blowing on brass instruments and whistles. Others directed high-power flashlight beams at the hotel’s windows. The crowd thinned after yellow-vested state police in riot gear marched into the area and declared an unlawful assembly, CNN reported.
Police were responding to “information that demonstrators were no longer peaceful and reports of damage to property,” the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said on X. “Dispersal orders were given prior to arrests.”
At the time she was killed, Good was participating in one of numerous “neighborhood patrols” that track, monitor and record ICE activities, according to family and local activists.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials said Good was “impeding” and “stalking” ICE agents all day, and that the officer opened fire in self-defense when she tried to ram her car into him in an “act of domestic terrorism.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, pointed to bystander video he said directly contradicted the federal government’s “garbage narrative.” Civil liberties advocates said the video showed federal agents lacked any justification for using deadly force.
Amid the sharply differing accounts of the shooting, Minnesota and Hennepin County law enforcement authorities said on Friday they were opening their own criminal inquiry of the incident separate from a federal investigation led by the FBI.
Some Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, asserted state prosecutors lack jurisdiction to charge a federal officer with a crime, though legal experts say federal immunity in such cases is not automatic.
The crisis atmosphere led Walz — a prominent Trump antagonist who branded Trump and his Republican allies as “weird” during his own run for vice president last year — to put the state’s National Guard on alert.
Federal-state tensions escalated further on Thursday when a US Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot and wounded a man and woman in their car after an attempted vehicle stop. As in the Minneapolis incident, DHS said the driver had tried to “weaponize” his vehicle and run over agents.
DHS on Friday identified the wounded driver and passenger as suspected gang associates from Venezuela who were in the US illegally. The agency said the woman had been involved in a prior shootout in Portland but provided no evidence of its allegations against the pair.
VIDEO EVIDENCE EMERGES
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, echoing Frey, said he could not be sure the government’s account was grounded in fact without an independent investigation.
The deployment of agents to Minneapolis follows Trump’s recent denunciations of Walz and his state’s large population of Somali immigrants over allegations of fraud dating back to 2020 by some nonprofit groups administering childcare and other social-service programs.
Good was shot dead just a few blocks from where George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer crushing his neck into the pavement with his knee during a videotaped arrest in May 2020. Floyd’s death sparked months of nationwide racial-justice protests during Trump’s first term in office.
Bystander video of the Minneapolis incident showed masked officers approaching Good’s Honda SUV while it was stopped at a perpendicular angle to the street, partially blocking traffic.
One agent is seen ordering her out of the car and grabbing onto the driver-side front door handle as the car pulls forward and steers away from the officers, one of whom jumps back and fires three shots into the front of the vehicle as it rolls past.
Video filmed by the officer who opened fire, identified through official comment and public records as Jonathan Ross, shows Good appearing calm. She is heard telling him, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you” — moments before he opens fire as she drives forward into the street, steering the car away from him.
Noem has said he was treated at a local hospital for unspecified injuries and released.
The car’s front bumper appears in the bystander video to pass Ross before he shot at Good. It is unclear from any of the footage whether the vehicle made contact with him.
In any case, Ross is shown remaining on his feet and can be seen walking after the incident, contradicting Trump’s assertion on social media that the woman “ran over the ICE officer.”
The two DHS-related shootings this week have drawn thousands of protesters to the streets of Minneapolis, Portland and other US cities, with many more demonstrations under the banner “ICE Out For Good” planned for Saturday and Sunday.
The rallies were being organized by a coalition of groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, MoveOn Civic Action, Voto Latino, and Indivisible, some of which were at the forefront of “No Kings” protests against Trump last year. (Reporting by Renee Hickman in Minneapolis and Nathan Layne in New York; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen, Joseph Ax and Maria Tsvetkova in New York and Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by William Mallard)
