The French navy on Monday handed over to authorities in Somalia's breakaway Puntland region the bodies of two pirates killed last week in an ambush to free French hostages.
"They brought only the dead bodies but the pirates they arrested still remain in their hands," Puntland's governor Muse Gele Yusuf told AFP.
French special forces on Friday stormed the yacht, The Tanit, and freed four hostages including a three-year-old boy. But his father, the craft's owner, was killed in the operation along with the two pirates.
Three other pirates were taken prisoner.
The Tanit was captured in the Gulf of Aden on April 4 as it headed for Zanzibar, in one of a rash of pirate attacks off the east African coast.
