A luxury liner with nearly 400 Australian tourists has become the latest targets of a pirate attack when their cruise ship was attacked off the coast of Somalia.
More than 29 pirate boats surrounded the MV Athena, which is carrying 200 Australian women and 189 men, as it passed through the Gulf of Aden on Tuesday night local time, News Ltd reported on Thursday.
A couple on board the Athena, which is due to dock in Fremantle, Western Australia, on Monday, said they saw 29 small boats with up to six pirates on each boat approach the liner.
But crew members had used water cannons to stop the pirates from boarding the ship.
The World Cruises Agency added that crew members holding fire hoses were patrolling the decks.
There have been about 100 attacks on ships off the Somali coast this year.
Forty vessels were hijacked and 13 are still in the hands of pirates along with more than 250 crew members.
The Gulf of Aden lies between Somalia and Yemen and is notorious for piracy.
On Sunday, another luxury cruise liner, the Oceania Nautica - which was carrying 50 Australians and some New Zealanders - came under fire as it passed through the area.
The pirates were aboard two small boats fitted with outboard motors, but the captain of the Nautica accelerated the cruise liner and managed to outrun the speedboats.