4 pirates down.....

Article I read today. Hopefully more nations start taking it to these pirates for everyone's sake.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8215021/somali-pirates-kill-4-on-us-yacht

Somali pirates kill 4 on US yacht -

Somali pirates have killed four Americans including a retired couple onboard their hijacked yacht in a sudden violent turn to efforts to end a hostage drama, the US military said.

Four Somali pirates also died, two of them killed by US special forces in one of the deadliest endings to a raft of hostage-takings off the coast of Somalia which often are resolved through ransom payments.

Jean and Scott Adam, a California couple active in missionary work, had been sailing the world on the S/V Quest yacht for more than seven years and had planned to take in sites from India to Djibouti to Crete on their latest trip.

Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, a couple from Seattle who joined the Adams, were also killed by the band of 19 pirates who commandeered the yacht in waters southeast of Oman, US officials said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States "strongly condemns the murder" of the four and urged other nations, particularly in Africa, to contribute to efforts to fight piracy from lawless Somalia.

"This deplorable act firmly underscores the need for continued international progress toward confronting the shared security challenge posed by piracy in the waters off the Horn of Africa," Clinton said in a statement.

President Barack Obama had authorized the use of force in case of an imminent threat to the hostages and was informed at 4:42 am (0942 GMT) of the "tragic outcome," his spokesman Jay Carney said.

Four US warships including the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise aircraft carrier had been tracking the S/V Quest since a Danish crew discovered three days earlier that it had been hijacked, US officials said.

The US military brought two of the pirates onboard the USS Sterett on Monday to conduct negotiations to free the hostages, said Vice Admiral Mark Fox, head of the US Naval Forces Central Command based in Bahrain.

Then early Tuesday morning, with "absolutely no warning," the pirates launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the USS Sterett, Fox said, leading US Special Forces to race to the yacht where they heard gunfire.

By the time they boarded, all four Americans had been shot. The niece of a victim, along with US officials, said that the US forces tried to revive them but that all died of their wounds.

The US Special Forces soon took control of the yacht, stabbing to death one pirate and shooting dead another, Fox told reporters at the Pentagon by telephone.

Two more Somali pirates were found dead inside the vessel in unclear circumstances, possibly the result of an earlier fight among the hijackers or of the bullets that killed the hostages, US officials said.