Capt. Richard Phillips Freed

UPDATE:4/12/09

The captain of the Maersk Alabama was freed Sunday after being held captive since Wednesday by pirates off the coast of Somalia, a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the situation told CNN.

The official said Capt. Richard Phillips is uninjured and in good condition, and that three of the four pirates were killed. The fourth pirate is in custody. Phillips was taken aboard the USS Bainbridge, a nearby naval warship.

Earlier Sunday afternoon Maersk Line Limited, owner of the Maersk Alabama, said the U.S. Navy informed the company that it had sighted Phillips in a lifeboat where pirates are holding him.

Phillips was spotted another time earlier in the day, the Navy said.

 Update:4/11/09

The crew of Maersk Alabama reached a Kenyan port Saturday evening without their captain, still held hostage by Somali pirates in a lifeboat hundreds of miles from shore.

Pirates off the eastern coast of Africa fired on U.S. sailors Saturday as they tried to reach the lifeboat where an American captain is being held, a U.S. official familiar with the situation told CNN. The gunfire forced the sailors, who did not return fire, to turn back, the official said.

The incident took place 12 or 13 hours ago, after sailors on the USS Bainbridge tried to send a small team to the lifeboat, said the official.

Capt. Richard Phillips offered himself as a hostage to the pirates during an attack on the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama on Wednesd

UPDATE: 4/10/09

Captain Richard Phillips jumped off the lifeboat overnight and tried to swim away, but he was recaptured by the pirates.

The escape bid was witnessed by the U.S. Navy but happened too quickly for them to come to his aid.

UPDATE:4/09/09

 (CNN) — A day after the Maersk Alabama was hijacked off the coast of Somalia, the ship’s captain “remains hostage but is unharmed,” Maersk spokesman Kevin Speers said Thursday morning.

“The safe return of the captain is our foremost priority,” Speers said.

Capt. Richard Phillips is being held on a lifeboat near the Maersk Alabama after the pirates who hijacked the ship reneged on their agreement to exchange him for one of their own, who himself had been captured by the crew members, according to the second officer of the ship, Ken Quinn.

UPDATE: 12:25

Crew members of a U.S.-flagged ship have regained control of the vessel from pirates who seized it, a Pentagon official said Wednesday.

The crew is believed to be safe, and one pirate is in custody, the official said. It’s unclear whether other pirates remain on board the ship or whether they have fled, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

(CNN) — Pirates near Somalia’s coastline attacked a cargo ship Wednesday with a crew of at least 20 U.S. nationals, according to the company that owns the vessel.

It is believed that the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama then was hijacked, according to a statement from Maersk Line Ltd. If so, it would be the sixth hijacking over the past week.

The vessel was en route to Mombasa, Kenya, when it was attacked about 310 miles (500 kilometers) off Somalia’s coast, the statement said.

U.S. government sources said the attack happened at about 7:30 a.m. local time. The nearest U.S. Navy warship was about 300 nautical miles, or 345 miles, away at the time, they said. The U.S. Navy issued another notice Tuesday warning mariners that the Somali piracy activity was extending hundreds of miles offshore.

A Maersk subsidiary in Norfolk, Virginia, owns and operates the cargo ship, Maersk spokesman Michael Storgaard said. He would not provide any details about the security arrangements on board the Maersk Alabama.

“We have very strict policies on the vessel. … Crews are trained to handle these types of situations,” Storgaard said from Maersk’s headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark.

He said the company is in the process of contacting the crew members’ relatives and setting up assistance for them.

“That is at this moment our primary concern,” Storgaard said.

The Maersk Line is one of the U.S. Defense Department’s primary shipping contractors, but the Maersk Alabama was not under the Pentagon’s contract at the time of the attack, according to Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the U.S. military’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

Storgaard said the Maersk Alabama was carrying “general cargo,” most likely including aid supplies to East Africa.

No action has been taken so far against the pirates, Christensen said.

“There is a task force present in the region to deter any type of piracy, but the challenge remains that the area is so big and it is hard to monitor all the time,” he said.

He said U.S.-flagged ships are not usually escorted by the military unless they request it from the U.S. Navy.

Recent attacks off Somalia’s coast, which have taken place south of the area patrolled by U.S. and coalition ships, show pirates are changing their tactics and taking advantage of tens of thousands of square miles of open water where fewer military ships patrol, according to U.S. military officials.

“They [pirates] are going where we are not; they are looking for targets where there is limited coalition presence,” according to a U.S. military briefing document shown to CNN.

Christensen said, “It appears the pirates are operating in a different fashion. It’s a lot like cops on a beat. The criminals will go where they’re not.”

Coalition ships mainly patrol in the busy sea lanes of the Gulf of Aden between Yemen and northern Somalia as ships come out of and head toward the mouth of the Red Sea.

“Despite increased naval presence in the region, ships and aircraft are unlikely to be close enough to provide support to vessels under attack. The scope and magnitude of the problem cannot be understated,” according to a Navy news release.