BERLIN (AP) — A cruise ship will evacuate passengers before sailing through waters off the Somali coast and fly them to the next port of call to protect them from possible pirate attacks, German cruise operator Hapag-Lloyd said yesterday.

An official with the European Union's anti-piracy mission said separately that the force would station armed guards on vulnerable cargo ships in the Gulf of Aden.

The MS Columbus cruise ship will drop off its 246 passengers at the port of Hodeidah in Yemen today before the ship and some of its crew sail through the Gulf.

The passengers will take a charter flight from there to Dubai and spend three days at a five-star hotel waiting to rejoin the 490-foot vessel in the southern Oman port of Salalah for the remainder of a round-the-world tour that began in Italy.

Hapag-Lloyd said in a statement was sending its passengers on the detour as a "precautionary measure," given rampant piracy off the coast of lawless Somalia that recently has targeted cruise ships as well as commercial vessels, including a Saudi oil tanker carrying $100 million in crude and a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other weapons.

The Hamburg-based company said that the German government denied a request for a security escort through the gulf.

Hapag-Lloyd spokesman Rainer Mueller said the company devised the fly over to heed a German Foreign Ministry travel warning about the increased risk of pirate attacks off the Somalian coast.

"As long as it is in effect, we won't travel through the Gulf of Aden with passengers," Mueller said.

Last week, pirates fired upon the M/S Nautica, a cruise liner carrying 650 passengers and 400 crew members, but the massive ship quickly outran its assailants. Other ships have not been so lucky. Pirates have attacked 32 vessels and hijacked 12 of them since NATO deployed a four-vessel flotilla on October 24 to escort cargo ships and conduct anti-piracy patrols.

An EU anti-piracy mission — which takes over for the NATO ships on Monday — may also involve stationing armed guards on the most vulnerable cargo ships in high-risk areas.