How the Navy Seals rescued Phillips

Negotiations with the three pirates were growing heated, Vice Adm. Bill Gortney said.

One of them pointed an AK-47 at the back of Phillips, who was tied up and in "imminent danger" of being killed when the commander of the nearby USS Bainbridge made the split-second decision to order his men to shoot, Gortney said. Navy snipers took aim at the pirates' heads and shoulders, he said.

SHOOT: There will be consequences to killing three pirates. The Somalis are holding over 230 captured crew from other fleets.

clipped from news.yahoo.com "This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it," said Gortney, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding the Greek ship anchored in the Somali town of Gaan, said: "Every country will be treated the way it treats us. In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying," he told The Associated Press. "We will retaliate (for) the killings of our men." Jamac Habeb, a 30-year-old self-proclaimed pirate, told the AP from one of Somalia's piracy hubs, Eyl, that: "From now on, if we capture foreign ships and their respective countries try to attack us, we will kill them (the hostages)." "Now they became our number one enemy," Habeb said of U.S. forces.