Helicopter-borne French commandos captured six pirates in Somalia yesterday in a daring raid that followed the release of 30 hostages from a luxury ship.

Marine commandos fired rockets to disable the jeeps of a dozen pirates as they fled overland after winning a ransom for the release of the mainly French crew of the vessel. The three-masted Ponant, seized a week earlier in the Gulf of Aden, was carrying no passengers.

French television said that the owners paid $2 million (£1 million) for the crew’s release but French generals indicated last night that their forces, flying in on Gazelle helicopters, had seized back a substantial amount from the pirates. The six, said to be local fishermen, were on a French warship and would be flown to France for prosecution.

President Sarkozy greeted families of the crew, who will be flown back to France from Djibouti, home to a large French military base.

General Jean-Louis Georgelin, the French Chief of Defence Staff, said that no public money had been paid to the pirates, who had boarded the ship from small inflatable boats as it was sailing for the Suez Canal after a voyage around Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. “There were no shots fired and they gave up with not too much difficulty,” he said. “It was an intervention not a pulverisation”. The other hostage-takers escaped.

The French denied reports from local Somali officials that several pirates had been killed in a firefight.

CMA-CGM, the company which owns the 288ft (88m) Ponant, refused to say how much ransom it had paid for its crew and the return of the vessel, which usually carries up to 64 passengers.

Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, welcomed a “happy ending” to the hostage incident and urged the international community to mobilise efforts against pirates in the Gulf of Aden.

Paris had flown its elite GIGN commandos, specialists in hostage situations, to the zone last week. They remained on standby while the seized vessel was shadowed by French warships. A news blackout was imposed as negotiations for a ransom got under way. The Somali Government in Mogadishu had opposed the negotiations, saying that it would encourage further attacks in the pirate infested area, but it gave the French the go-ahead to attack the hostage-takers.

In Manila the Government welcomed the release of six Filipino crew members, who were also taken to Djibouti.

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