万花筒 2009-04-13&04-14 被劫船只船长获救（在线收听）

Breaking News on the Sunday afternoon, the story we have been following for you for more than 100 hours, five days, of the American captain being held captive by Somali pirates. We have learned today he has been released. Let's find out the details of that release. Find out how he is doing. Let me bring in Zain Verjee. She's our State Department correspondent, who's live on the line for us.

What we are hearing here in London, and this is from a senior US official that has knowledge of the situation on the ground that is fluid but initial reports indicating that the captain jumped overboard again. According to this source, that provided an opportunity. It left the pirates exposed in the boat and apparently they trained their rifle onto captain Richard Philips. Before they could take any action or pull the trigger, they themselves were shot and killed. The fourth pirate is in custody, and the reason he is in custody and alive, is that he has actually gone to the USS Bainbridge to negotiate, so they have him in custody, Melissa.

Tells us more about what you know about that, say, when did he go to the USS Bainbridge for that negotiation?

Well, this is, those details are unclear, because this is a fluid and developing situation and we're beginning to receive information trickling in from different sources. It's not clear exactly when that happened or exactly how far either of the vessels was from the Somali coast. We understood early on that, about 40 miles away from the Somali boarder and the pirate’s lair is where Captain Richard Phillips would, may, would may have inevitably ended up. But it appears that opportunity was created and the US Navy Seals and the military took advantage of the situation. This happened just a short while ago. So information coming in and this sort of situation may, may trickle in slowly and be differing in some instances. It's important to understand that, but what we do understand is that Captain Richard Phillips is freed and on the USS Bainbridge, I asked my source where it was going and it wasn’t clear where, specifically it would head, to the port of Mombasa in Kenya or not, Melissa.

Zain Verjee live on the line for us from London.