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Paris: French commandos seized six pirates in Somalia on Friday during a daring helicopter raid launched shortly after the bandits had released the 30-strong crew of a luxury yacht hijacked last week.
French officials said the owners of the yacht paid a $2 million (Dh7.34 million) ransom to obtain the freedom of the crew and as soon as it was clear that they were all safe, the commandos went into action aboard helicopters to track down the pirates.
A district commissioner in Somalia told Reuters that five local people had died in the attack, but the French military denied killing anyone in their daylight raid.
“It was an intervention, not a pulverisation,” said General Jean-Louis Georgelin, head of the armed forces general staff.
“When we captured the pirates we also recovered some interesting bags,” he said, making clear that some, although not all of the ransom had been recovered in the raid.
Georgelin said the French military tracked the pirates, believed to be Somali fishermen, after they made landfall and moved in when they saw some of the gang getting away in a car.
A sniper in one helicopter shot out the car engine while another helicopter dropped off three elite French soldiers who captured the six pirates and hauled them off to a French helicopter carrier waiting off the Somali coast.
“It is the first time an act of piracy in this area has been resolved so quickly ... and it is also the first time that some of the pirates have been apprehended,” Admiral Edouard Guillard told a news conference in Paris.
French officials said the pirates would be tried in France. They said Paris would also seek much tougher United Nations action against maritime piracy.
About 12 pirates grabbed the three-masted yacht, the Ponant, last Friday 850km out to sea in the Gulf of Aden. They then sailed the boat to the Somali coast, eventually mooring the vessel at Gara’ad, near the town of Eyl.
The French navy sent two boats to the area, with four or five helicopters on board and about 50 commandos. A French admiral was also parachuted into the sea and picked up by the task force to help lead the operation.
The Foreign Ministry said the crew, 22 of whom are French, would be repatriated as soon as possible. Most of the other crew members came from Ukraine and the Philippines.
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