The French navy continued to trail a luxury yacht off the Somali coast yesterday, two days after pirates stormed the boat and took its 30 crew hostage, French Defence Minister Herve Morin said.

"We are still in this phase of the pirates carrying on sailing with us following them at a distance," Mr Morin told Europe 1 radio, adding that he expected the hijackers would eventually make land somewhere in Somalia. Kidnapping and piracy are lucrative businesses in lawless Somalia and most Somalis treat their captives well in anticipation of a good ransom.

Local authorities said the boat was off Garaad, a fishing town in central Somalia, after being seized by pirates from Harardheere. From that port, privateers have made Somalian waters among the world's most dangerous.

"We do not have the military capacity to combat pirates. They have fast boats, sophisticated weapons and the ransom money from other vessels they seized in the past enabled them to be strong," Ahmed Said Ow-Nur, Ports Minister for the semi-autonomous Puntland region, told Reuters by phone.