NAIROBI, Kenya — A pirate fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. Navy destroyer shadowing a hijacked yacht with four Americans aboard Tuesday. Then gunfire rang out, the military said. U.S. special forces rushed to the yacht only to find the four Americans fatally wounded.
The experienced yacht enthusiasts from California and Washington are the first Americans killed by Somali pirates since the start of attacks off east Africa several years ago. One of the American couples onboard had been sailing around the world since 2004 handing out Bibles.
Killing hostages “has now become part of our rules,” said a pirate who identified himself as Muse Abdi, and he referred to last week’s sentencing of a pirate to 33 years in prison for the 2009 attack on a U.S. cargo vessel, the Maersk Alabama.
“From now on, anyone who tries to rescue the hostages in our hands will only collect dead bodies,” he said. “It will never ever happen that hostages are rescued, and we are hauled to prison.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the killings, saying in a statement that the slayings were “deplorable” and underscored the need for international cooperation in fighting the scourge of piracy in waters off the Horn of Africa.
Pirates had hijacked the 58-foot yacht Quest south of Oman on Friday. Since then, four U.S. warships and skyhigh drones shadowed the vessel’s movement as pirates tried to sail it to the Somali shore. U.S. officials negotiated with the captors via radio.
But at 8 a.m. east Africa time Tuesday, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired from the Quest at the USS Sterett, a guided-missile destroyer 600 yards away. The projectile missed, and almost immediately afterward smallarms fire was heard coming from the yacht, said Vice Adm. Mark Fox, commander of the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
Several pirates then appeared on deck with their hands up. U.S. forces boarded the vessel and tried to provide lifesaving care to the Americans, but they died, Fox said. No U.S. troops were injured or killed.
Thirteen pirates were captured and detained Tuesday, and two other pirates had boarded the USS Sterett on Monday to negotiate, Fox said.
A member of a U.S. special operations force killed one of the pirates with a knife, Foxsaid. A second pirate also was killed, and the bodies of two other pirates were discovered onboard, bringing to 19 the total number of pirates involved. The U.S. military didn’t say how those two died, and it was not known whether the pirates had fought among themselves.
Pirates have increased attacks off the coast of east Africa in recent years despite an international flotilla of warships dedicated to protecting vessels and stopping the pirate assaults.
But the conventional wisdom in the shipping industry had been that Somali pirates are businessmen looking for a multimillion-dollar ransom payday, not insurgents looking to terrorize people.
“We have heard threats against the lives of Americans before, but it strikes me as being very, very unusual why they would kill hostages outright,” said Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, the head of Dryad Maritime Intelligence, adding that the pirates must realize that killing Americans will invite a military response.
President Barack Obama, who was notified about the deaths at 4:42 a.m. Washington time, had authorized the military Saturday to use force in case of an imminent threat to the hostages, said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
The Quest was the home of Jean and Scott Adam of Marina del Rey, near Los Angeles. The two had been sailing around the world since December 2004. Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle of Seattle had recently joined the Adams.
“Great sailors, good people. They were doing what they wanted to do, but that’s small comfort in the face of this,” said Joe Grande of the Seattle Singles Yacht Club, where Riggle and Macay were members.
The last time pirates kidnapped a U.S. citizen - during the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama - Navy sharpshooters killed two pirates and rescued the ship’s captain.
Gibbon-Brooks said the killings were “extremely unwise” by the Somalis and that the deaths threaten what has been a successful and lucrative business model.
Only minutes before the military announced that the four Americans had died, a Somali pirate said by phone that if the yacht were attacked, “the hostages will be the first to go.”
“Some pirates have even suggested rigging the yacht with land mines and explosives so as the whole yacht explodes with the first gunshot,” said the pirate, who gave his name as Abdullahi Mohamed, who claimed to be a friend of the pirates holding the four Americans.
The military said U.S. forces had been monitoring the Quest for about three days, since shortly after the Friday attack. Four Navy warships were involved, including the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.
Information for this article was contributed by Pauline Jelinek, Abdi Guled, George Tibbits and Doug Esser of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 02/23/2011