NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Pirates chased and shot at a U.S. cruise liner with more than 1,000 people on board but failed to hijack the vessel as it sailed along a corridor patrolled by international warships, a maritime official said today.

The liner, carrying 656 international passengers and 399 crew members, was sailing through the Gulf of Aden on Sunday when it encountered six bandits in two speedboats, said Noel Choong who heads the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center in Malaysia.

The pirates fired at the passenger liner but the larger boat was faster than the pirates’ vessels, Choong said.

“It is very fortunate that the liner managed to escape,” he said, urging all ships to remain vigilant in the area.

The International Maritime Bureau, which fights maritime crime, did not know how many cruise liners use these waters.

The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, said it was aware of the failed hijacking but had no further details.

Ship owner Oceania Cruises Inc. identified the vessel as the M/S Nautica.

In a statement on its Web site, the company said pirates fired eight rifle shots at the liner, but that the ship’s captain increased speed and managed to outrun the skiffs.

All passengers and crew are safe and there was no damage to the vessel, it said.

The Nautica was on a 32-day cruise from Rome to Singapore, with stops at ports in Italy, Egypt, Oman, Dubai, India, Malaysia and Thailand, the Web site said. Based on that schedule, the liner was headed from Egypt to Oman when it was attacked.

The liner arrived in the southern Oman port city of Salalah on Monday morning, and the passengers toured the city before leaving for the capital, Muscat, Monday evening, an official of the Oman Tourism Ministry said today.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, and pirates have taken advantage of the country’s lawlessness to launch attacks on foreign shipping from the Somali coast. Around 100 ships have been attacked so far this year.

Somali prime minister Nur Hassan Hussein said Tuesday that his country has been torn apart by 18 years of civil war and cannot stop piracy alone.

“This needs a tremendous effort,” Hussein told The Associated Press. He has appealed for international troops, as his government’s Ethiopian allies have said they would pull out their forces by the end of the year.

Ethiopia, the region’s military powerhouse, has been integral in boosting the government. But Islamic insurgents have now seized control of all of southern Somalia except for the capital and the parliamentary seat of Baidoa.

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Associated Press writers Katharine Houreld in Nairobi, Kenya, Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Saeed al-Nahdy in Muscat, Oman, contributed to this report.