Somali pirates defiant, vow retaliation

Somali pirates on Monday vowed to retaliate for the deaths of three colleagues who were shot dead by US Navy snipers hours before in a daring nighttime assault that freed a 53-year-old American captain. The Navy Seals late Sunday rescued freighter Capt. Richard Phillips, who had been held by pirates on a lifeboat that drifted in the Indian Ocean for five days. "Every country will be treated the way it treats us," said Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding a Greek ship anchored in the pirate den of Gaan, a central Somali town. "In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying," he told The Associated Press by telephone. "We will retaliate for the killings of our men."