Nairobi, (DPA) — Three shots from US Navy snipers, and the drama was over. Three Somali pirates lay dead and Richard Phillips, the American captain held hostage on a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean since Wednesday, was free.
Crew members on the Maersk Alabama, the ship the pirates tried to seize only to end up with the consolation prize of its captain, celebrated as news emerged Sunday night that Phillips had been rescued.
They cheered, fired off flares and draped a US flag over the side of the ship in the Kenyan port of Mombasa, where the Alabama docked Saturday after reluctantly leaving its captain to his fate.
According to Vice Admiral William E. Gortney, head of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, the on-scene commander made a "split-second decision" that Phillip's life was in danger and ordered the snipers to open fire from the USS Bainbridge, a destroyer trailing the lifeboat.
The unexpectedly firm action sent out a message to the thousands of other pirates that have plagued Somalia's coastal waters for years.
How they respond will play a part in the fate of the hundreds of other hostages still being held. Over 200 crew are in pirate hands - Filipinos, Italians and Romanians among them. The worry for these hostages and those that will be taken in the future is that the killings may lead to a stronger pirate response.
"This (Phillip's rescue) could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it," Gortney told reporters Sunday.
Until now, there have been few deaths associated with piracy off Somalia in the past few years, despite hundreds of attacks.
The Russian captain of the MV Faina, carrying tanks and ammunition from Ukraine to Kenya, died of a heart attack after his ship was hijacked in September.
Florent Lemacon, the owner of a yacht freed by French forces Friday, died during the rescue effort, although France has acknowledged he may have been shot by his would-be liberators. Two pirates were also shot dead during the raid.
Somali pirates are not rabid killers. Rather, they are young men looking to make easy money in a country where other options are limited.
In general, pirates have looked after their hostages in the hope of receiving a fat ransom, but this may be about to change.
Immediately after Phillip's release, other pirates threatened revenge against the US and warned that from now on they will kill hostages at the slightest sign of force.
Piracy experts are also not optimistic that the US action will put other pirates off further hijackings.
"We are hoping this will discourage others, but at this stage I very much doubt it," Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre, told DPA. "There are a lot of pirates out there and each ship is worth at least a million dollars."
French naval forces have never been shy about taking captured boats by force. The storming of the yacht Friday was the third such French action in a year. Yet piracy has continued to climb.
Equally, sending in warships to patrol the region has failed to send the pirates scurrying back to their hideouts in Puntland, the semi-autonomous region of Somalia where many of the gangs are based.
In 2008, pirates seized over 40 vessels in and around the Gulf of Aden and collected tens of millions of dollars in ransoms, prompting the international community to send in a naval force at the tail end of the year.
Around 15 warships from the European Union, a US-led coalition task force and individual countries such as Russia, India and China are now patrolling the area.
However, after a brief lull in January and February, which piracy experts say was due largely to bad weather, the pirates are back with a bang. They have attacked 18 ships over the last three weeks. Five of those ships are in pirate hands, joining others that have been held for months.
As the US Fifth Fleet acknowledges, the area is simply too big - around 2.85 million sq km - to patrol effectively. Pirates are also now venturing farther into the Indian Ocean to avoid the international patrols.
Ship owners are being encouraged to take defensive measures and there is a growing debate about reviving the practice of arming crew members on commercial vessels.
International observers, however, have long said the only way to nip piracy in the bud is to sort out the unholy mess that is Somalia, which has been without a functioning government since 1991 and is plagued by lawlessness.
"The ultimate solution for piracy is on land," Gortney said. "Piracy stems from lawlessness, lack of governance and economic instability."

San Francisco, (DPA) — The identity of a brutal killer who murdered an eight-year-old-girl in the quiet California farming town of Tracy has shocked local residents almost as much as the murder itself.
Instead of a paedophile, police Friday arrested Melissa Huckaby, 28, a church school teacher and mother of the best friend of victim Sandra Cantu.
Sandra's body was found last week stuffed into a suitcase in an irrigation pond, just two fields over from the mobile home park where she lived close to her friend and her alleged murderer.
Police have not said how Sandra was killed or released a motive for Huckaby's crime. But local reports Monday said she had been fighting depression and had murdered the girl in the church where her grandfather is pastor.
"We couldn't believe that, you know, a mother of a little girl that she used to play with was the one that killed her, allegedly," Sandra's uncle, Joe Chavez, told television programme Good Morning America Monday. "I guess women commit horrific crimes, too."
"I'm in total shock," Tracy resident Debra Moore, told local reporters. "It's scary. Who can you trust?"

Wellington, (DPA) — Fiji's military government, which is ruling with emergency powers, has strengthened its hold on the country by taking over the Reserve Bank and ordering the Human Rights Commission office to close, according to reports from the capital Suva.
The Reserve Bank tightened exchange controls with immediate effect and deputy governor Sada Reddy said the move was in line with the bank's core objective of safeguarding foreign reserves, Radio New Zealand reported.
Cameron Bagrie, chief economist for the ANZ and National Bank in New Zealand, predicted the Fiji economy would now implode, the report said.
The military government under Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, which has imposed strict censorship on the Pacific island country's newspapers, radio and television services, ordered the Fiji Human Rights Commission not to open its office in Suva following the Easter holiday, the independent Fijilive website reported.
It quoted chairperson Shaista Shameem as saying: "My staff went to the office this morning and they were greeted by police officers guarding the premises.
"They were informed that they had orders that the FHRC office will not be opened."
The Australian Broadcasting Commission's veteran Pacific affairs reporter Sean Dorney and New Zealand TV3 reporter Sia Aston and her cameraman were escorted to aircraft leaving Fiji Tuesday after being ordered out of the country.
A local Fiji One television reporter, identified by colleagues as Edwin Nand, was arrested, reportedly for transmitting news material overseas.
Bainimarama's government, which has ruled since a military coup ousted the elected government in December 2006, is back in power after being declared illegal by the Court of Appeal last week.
President Ratu Josefa Iloilo sacked the judges, revoked the constitution and enacted emergency powers before swearing in Bainimarama and his cabinet.
The governments of Australia and New Zealand have criticised Bainimarama as a self-appointed dictator and are consulting other countries on extending sanctions on the military administration while not hurting Fiji's 837,000 people.
Census figures showed that 25,000 Indians left the troubled country from 1996 to 2007 while the number of indigenous Fijians rose by more than 82,000.

Islamabad, (IANS) — On a day of fast moving developments, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari late Monday approved the imposition of Sharia laws in parts of the country's restive northwest, including Swat, in return for a controversial deal with the Taliban for laying down their arms.
Zardari signed the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation after parliament approved the measure earlier Monday, Geo TV quoted senior North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour as saying.
The regulation will see the imposition of Sharia laws in the Malkhand division of NWFP that comprises seven districts, including Swat, where the writ of the Taliban largely runs.
Zardari had given his nod for the Feb 16 deal between the NWFP government and Taliban-linked radical cleric Sufi Mohammad but balked at acceding to it in face of growing international pressure.
"We respect the mandate of the provincial government and congratulate the people," Geo TV quoted Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani as saying after the house cleared the measure, following a walkout by Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) members.
Speaking earlier Monday after the pact was tabled in the National Assembly, Gilani said this had been done as the government wanted to build national consensus on the measure.
"We did not want to by-pass the house as the parliament is sovereign," APP news agency quoted Gilani as saying.
"We want that our hands should be strengthened and that the whole nation is behind us," he added.
"The president gave his consent (to signing the accord). He gave a go ahead to have an agreement with the local authorities. The agreement was done with our consent," Gilani maintained.
Observers here saw the statement as Gilani's bid to downplay reports that the Swat accord had become a hot potato for Zardari, who had tossed this into parliament's court, instead of ratifying it.
At the same time, it is a fact that parliament was not consulted when Zardari gave his nod for the accord.
According to The News, "Zardari does not want to be held responsible for any negative fallout if this deal backfires in future, as then parliament will be responsible".
Many Western nations, including the US termed the deal a "retrograde" step as it was seen as bowing before the Taliban and getting in return too little for giving up too much.
The deal appeared to have come unstuck last week with Sufi Muhammad winding up his peace camp and leaving Swat to protest Zardari's delay in acceding to the accord. He then clarified the pact was intact but was dependent on Zardari signing it.
Gilani, The News noted, "was also said to have been caught off guard when he received the copy of Nizam-e-Adl from the presidency to table it before parliament as he, too, like rest of the politicians was expecting the president to sign the agreement".
What apparently tipped the balance was Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan, who advised the president against taking responsibility for the deal.
"Awan was of the view this deal should be sent to parliament for discussion, debate and subsequent approval or rejection," The News said, adding the minister said that if parliament, representing the people of Pakistan, was ready to ink the deal with Taliban, the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government "would not be singled out in case the deal went wrong at any stage".