Pirates Attack Cruise Ship

The Seabourn Spirit was attacked by two pirate boats about 100 miles off the Somali coast. One boat fired upon the vessel, while heavily armed bandits attempted to get onboard. The Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line is a subsidiary of Carnival Corp.

The Somalia coast is considered the most dangerous in the region in terms of maritime security. The attackers never got close enough to board the Spirit, but one member of the 161-person crew was injured by shrapnel. The ship escaped by shifting to high speed and changing course. The ship was carrying approximately 151 passengers, which were mostly Americans, including some Australians and Europeans.

The Spirit was bound for Mombassa, Kenya, after a 16-day voyage that departed from Alexandria, Egypt. This was the last voyage in the region before the ship sailed on its schedule to Singapore. The 440-foot-long, 10,000-ton cruise ship, registered in the Bahamas, sustained only minor damage.

There has been a steep rise in piracy this year along Somalia's nearly 2,000-mile coastline, with 15 violent incidents reported between March and August, compared with just two for all of 2004, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a division of the International Chamber of Commerce that tracks trends in piracy.

In June, a U.N.-chartered ship carrying 935 tons of rice for Somali victims of the Asian tsunami was hijacked by pirates, who held crew members hostage for three months before releasing them.