Somali pirates have shot dead four US crew members of a yacht hijacked in the Indian Ocean last week.
Two pirates were also killed after US forces stormed the vessel Quest which is thought to have been less than a day away from the Somali coast.
It is not known if the hijackers shot their American hostages in cold blood or while being engaged by US Navy assets during a possible standoff on Tuesday.
"At approximately 1 am EST [eastern states time] today, while negotiations were ongoing to secure the release of four American hostages, US forces responded to gunfire aboard the pirated vessel (S/V) Quest," a statement on the US Central Command website read.
"As they responded to the gunfire, reaching and boarding the Quest, the forces discovered all four hostages had been shot by their captors. Despite immediate steps to provide life-saving care, all four hostages ultimately died of their wounds.
"During the boarding of the Quest, the reaction force was engaged by pirates on board the vessel. Two pirates died during the confrontation and 13 were captured and detained along with two pirates already in US Forces custody.
"The US Forces also found the remains of two other pirates already dead aboard the Quest. In total, it is believed 19 pirates were involved in the hijacking of the S/V Quest."
The dead hostages have been named elsewhere as the boat's owners Scott and Jean Adam as well as Phyllis Mackay and Bob Riggle. They were part of a cruise boat rally from Australia to the Mediterranean with the boat's owners spending the last few years sailing around the world delivering bibles to communities. The vessel was hijacked in the Arabian Sea off Oman on Friday.
Questions are bound to be raised about the role played by US forces in the deaths of the crew members. The outcome was markedly different from that when pirates stormed the 1,098-teu boxship Maersk Alabama (built 1998) in April 2009. In that instance the four pirates took the master Richard Phillips hostage in a lifeboat before three were killed by US snipers and the fourth arrested with Phillips unharmed.
Only last week the sole surviging pirate Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse was senteced in New York to over 33 years in jail for his crimes. Those arrested after Tuesday's botched rescue bid will no doubt face similar charges and detention periods.
Although the killing of crew members by Somali pirates has historically been rare, there have been worrying signs recently that the willingness to do so has increased as the international community attempts to get to grips with the growing problem in the Indian Ocean. At the end of January pirates who hijacked the 9,775-dwt Beluga Nomination (built 2006) executed one crew member and shot dead another following a failed rescue attempt from the Seychelles Coastguard. The ship remains under hijack with only seven of its original 12 crew alive after two escaped in a life raft and one is missing, presumed drowned after jumping overboard.
The Quest was one of a huge number of pleasure boats taking part in a rally through the Indian Ocean. The organisers of the event had received naval warning about a fortnight ago that their intended route to Salalah in Oman would take them directly through the most pirate-infested waters in the region and that there was a high likelihood of at least one hijacking.
The route was then changed for the rally to hug the Indian and Pakistani coasts crossing over towards Oman near the Strait of Hormuz and staying close to shore until Salalah. Inexplicably, however, the Quest crew decided to deviate from the planned route on leaving Mumbai and made a bee line across the Indian Ocean towards the Omani port before the vessel was hijacked on Friday.
One of a number of statements made on the website of the rally's organiser, Blue Water Rallies, reads: "Scott and Jean Adam joined the Oz-Med section of the Blue Water Rally just before Christmas and had been sailing with the rally from Phuket as far as Mumbai...However, Quest chose to take an independent route from Mumbai to Salalah, leaving the Rally on 15 February."
The Danish warship Esbern Snare is said to have intercepted a pirate action group in the area soon after the hijacking and arrested a number of suspects who admitted being party to the hijacking. Their skiff was sunk by the warship and they are believed to remain onboard.
