"Yes, we know where they are," Kouchner told RTL radio. "I can't give you details and even if I had them, I would not give them because this anti-piracy operation initiated by France now involves several countries."

French officials said the "Tanit" sailing yacht with two couples and a three-year-old boy onboard was seized on Saturday. The boat had left Vannes on France's Atlantic coast en route to the Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar.

France launched a rescue operation to free another French luxury yacht, Le Ponant, and its 30 crew in April last year, and in September dispatched commandos to release a French couple seized by pirates aboard their yacht.

"These boats are attacked far from the shores, very far out, and that obviously does not help the European Atalante operation," Kouchner said.

The European Union launched its first-ever naval operation codenamed Atalante in December, deploying six warships and three surveillance planes to patrol pirate-infested seas in the Horn of Africa.

French couple Chloe and Florent Lemacon left France in July last year with their son Colin, then two years old, aboard the 12.5 metre (42-feet) Tanit and picked up another couple along the way.

Writing on their Internet blog two weeks before the hijacking, they said they had started sailing with the lights off to avoid detection. "We are in the middle of the piracy zone, but so far there is nothing to report."

"The danger is there and has indeed become greater over the past months, but the ocean is vast. The pirates must not be allowed to destroy our dream," they wrote.

The piracy monitoring group Ecoterra International said the hijacking took place some 640 kilometres (400 miles) off the coast of Ras Hafun, northeast Somalia.

The French navy had strongly advised the Tanit's crew against travelling to Kenya and warned them of the serious risk posed by pirates in the waters off the coast of Somalia, an army spokesman said.

"They met the crew of the Floreal (surveillance ship) on March 20 and were strongly advised not to pursue the trip to Kenya, even at great distance from the Somali coast," said army spokesman Christophe Prazuck.

An email message was sent to the Tanit crew on March 27 stating that sailing to Kenya was "very dangerous" due to a spike in the number of pirate attacks.

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Brussels (AFP) May 2, 2009
A Portuguese frigate captured 19 Somali pirates after foiling an attack on an oil tanker but released them all, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation officials said Saturday.