Helicopter-borne French troops have swooped in on Somali pirates after they released 30 hostages from a yacht, seizing six of the pirates and recovering sacks of money _ apparently ransom paid by the yacht's owners to win the captives' release.
The pirates had boarded the 88-meter (288-foot) French luxury yacht Ponant a week ago, capturing its crew _ 22 of whom were French _ off the coast of Somalia in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates seized more than two dozen boats off the Somali coast last year, mostly in hopes of securing ransoms.
Gen. Jean-Louis Georgelin, the chief of staff of France's armed forces, said the pirates released the hostages Friday after negotiations with the ship owner. That phase of the operation was calm, with no weapons fired and the hostages brought smoothly to safely, he said.
Afterward, however, a French attack helicopter chased a vehicle of pirates as it fled the scene, firing to destroy its engine, he said. There were conflicting reports about what happened next.
Dahir Abdulqadir, a governor in the region where the yacht was held, said officials had heard "reports over VHF radio that at least eight people were killed." The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy "categorically denied" that any pirates died in the raid.
Georgelin said six pirates _ half the total _ were brought into French custody with clearance from Somalia. He said they would be tried in French courts.
The pirates "gave themselves up without too much difficulty," he added.
While insisting the French state did not pay a ransom, the general hinted heavily that the boat's owners did.
"Naturally, absolutely no public money was paid in this affair," Georgelin said. He added: "Check with the ship owner. In capturing the pirates, we also recovered some interesting bags ... We recovered part of the ransom that was probably paid."
An official in Somalia's semiautonomous Puntland region, near where the yacht was held, had warned France earlier this week against paying a ransom, saying it would encourage pirates to continue taking hostages.
The chief of the company that owns the ship declined to comment on the issue.
"It's obviously a very delicate and difficult context, and so the only thing you should take from this is the outcome _ crew members who are going to be able to go home to their families," Jean-Emmanuel Sauvee told reporters after meeting with Sarkozy and families of the freed hostages.
Karim Meghoufel, the brother-in-law of a pastry chef on board the boat, added, "We don't know how much they paid, and in any case, we don't want to know."
The hostages, including six Filipinos and a Ukrainian, were in good condition Friday, officials said. Abdi-salan Qoje, a fisherman working on the Somali shore near where the boat was being held, said he had seen dozens of people being ferried from the hijacked ship.
"They waved at us," he told The Associated Press by telephone from the village of Eyl, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) north of Mogadishu.
After the hostages were freed, they were put on a French military vessel and sent toward Djibouti. Family members said they were expected back in France on Sunday.
According to the ship owner's Web site, the three-mast, 64-passenger Ponant features four decks, two restaurants, and indoor and outdoor luxury lounges. About a dozen pirates stormed the yacht April 4 as it was returning without passengers from the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, toward the Mediterranean Sea.
France's military quickly mobilized, sending in military vessels and a commando force that conducts anti-terrorist and hostage rescue operations. Somalia has been wracked by more than a decade of violence and anarchy and does not have its own navy. A transitional government formed in 2004 with U.N. help has struggled to assert control.
Sarkozy's chief diplomatic aide, Jean-David Levitte, said France planned to pitch anti-piracy measures at the U.N. Security Council. One suggestion is for states that can afford it to pitch in with maritime patrols in waters where pirate attacks are a problem, he said.
Levitte said 3,200 people had been taken hostage at sea in the last 10 years in trouble spots around the world, with 500 of them wounded and 160 killed.
"We thought piracy had disappeared, but it has been revealed as a growing menace to international security," he said.
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Associated Press writers Angela Charlton and John Leicester in Paris, Mohamed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu, Somalia, and Oliver Teves in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.
