On Monday the Ethiopian cargo ship Andinet radioed for help, saying it was under attack from two small motorboats in the Gulf of Aden 650 kilometres (400 miles) north-east of Djibouti and 50 kilometres south of the Yemeni coast, the German navy said in a statement.

The German frigate Karlsruhe, which was 20 kilometres away, dispatched a Sea Lynx helicopter and the two motorboats "left at high speed," the statement said.

On Tuesday the British tanker Trafalgar radioed for help after coming under attack by eight or nine speedboats. The Karlsruhe again sent its Sea Lynx and the pirates again fled, it said.

Over the past year there has been a sharp rise in the number of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden, around the tip of lawless Somalia which juts into the Indian Ocean and commands access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Experts believe that few ships are now safe from pirates in the Indian Ocean. A Saudi super-tanker carrying 100 million dollars worth of oil was hijacked on Saturday and on Tuesday was anchored off Somalia.

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