'3 Rounds, 3 Dead Bodies'

Precision Volley by Navy SEALs Ended a Five-Day Ordeal For an American Seaman, but Piracy Off Somalia Continues

As dusk began to fall Sunday, the Somali pirates holding captain Richard Phillips had grown edgy.

As they bobbed in the ocean near the USS Bainbridge, a Navy destroyer sent to rescue Phillips, the teenage pirates were experiencing withdrawal after days without khat, a mildly narcotic leaf chewed in for its stimulant effects. "They were realizing they were in a no-win situation," said a senior U.S. military official. "They were floating around in rough waters, they were tired. . . . These guys didn't have their chew with them."

After the on-scene commander judged that Phillips's life was suddenly in immediate jeopardy, three shots rang out from the Bainbridge in indistinguishable succession, felling the three pirates in the lifeboat. Bound tightly, Phillips could not move to celebrate the end of his ordeal until Navy SEALs climbed aboard the small craft and set him free.

"It was pretty remarkable that these snipers nailed these guys," said the senior military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "You think of rough seas, 75, 80 feet away, and under darkness, and they got them. Three pirates, three rounds, three dead bodies."

The precision volley culminated a five-day confrontation on the pale blue seas off one the world's most unstable nations, a place that still haunts U.S. foreign-policy makers with images of dead American soldiers being dragged through the capital during a failed U.S. intervention in the 1990s.

This time the Navy took the lead against a force of four, and then three, Somali pirates confined to the cramped quarters of a cargo ship's lifeboat. But the challenge of preserving the life of Phillips, a 53-year-old Vermont resident, loomed large enough for President Obama's new national security operation that he was briefed as many as five times a day as three U.S. warships and an 18-foot dinghy squared off on the Indian Ocean.

Three deft sniper shots ended a drama that appeared initially as another example of a muscle-bound U.S. military unable to adapt

to today's unpredictable security threats. In the end, U.S. Special Operations Forces easily defeated lightly armed, untrained men in a battle that U.S. officials say will not end piracy.

The pirates had probably been tracking the Maersk Alabama for days when on Wednesday four pirates in a small craft tossed ropes and grappling hooks from the shadow of the cargo ship's looming blue hull. They carried pistols and AK-47 assault rifles.

The Maersk Alabama's crew, a mix of young men and veterans, locked themselves in safe areas of the ship as they were trained to do. Some improvised.

One sailor, A.T.M. Reza, forced one of the pirates into the engine room, where he stabbed the pirate in the hand. The crew then used the wounded pirate as leverage to force his comrades from the ship.

As part of the negotiations, Phillips agreed to board the lifeboat with the pirates, crew members said. The deal called for him to swim back to the Maersk Alabama once the lifeboat was safely away. The pirates never let him go.