"We bravely faced the pirates and their weapons for more than two hours and if it hadn't been for God's help and a German military ship, we wouldn't be alive now." Wael Gaber Barakat, mechanical engineer for the National Navigation Company, told Al-Masry Al-Youm how the Wadi el-Arab vessel, on which he works, was rescued from pirates. "It all started on December 24, 2008. We were getting back from our trip to Ukraine. We were in the morning. We crossed the Black Sea, Turkey's Dardanelles and Bosporus into the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and finally the Red Sea. "In the Gulf of Aden, approximately at 9:45 a.m., we heard the alarm from the boat shipmaster, Mr. el-Sayyed Khodar, as we were being attacked by pirates while we were entering the Somali territorial waters. "We were 30 crewmembers onboard and our only weapons were water hoses. We sent many SOSs until a German military ship responded after two hours of fight against those heavily-armed pirates. "Thanks to that ship, a German military helicopter was sent. The Somali boat ran away, but the helicopter followed it and forced the pirates to throw their weapons into the sea. The vessel eventually called medical help for me."
