"A German warship responded quickly to a distress call. It deployed a chopper to scare off the Somali pirates who were shooting at the ship in the Gulf of Aden," said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Board's piracy reporting centre.

Choong said the Egyptian vessel was sailing from the Suez Canal to Asia with a 31 crew on board when attackers opened fire with automatic weapons in pirate-infested waters off the coast of Somalia.

"A passing ship relayed the pirate attack incident to the IMB. We informed the coalition forces and the German warship was deployed to the scene. Their fast response prevented the hijack," he said.

Choong said the seafarer who was shot was picked up by another helicopter for medical treatment of a leg injury on board the German warship.

"Pirates are still active despite the presence of coalition forces. They are finding loopholes to launch their hijack attempts," he said.

Last Thursday a Malaysian warship mounted a similar operation to rescue a Chinese vessel after pirates boarded the ship.

Patrols off the Horn of Africa that were, until recently, carried out by NATO ships are now being done by a European Union task force.

Japan said Thursday it was considering dispatching a destroyer to waters off Somalia to guard against pirates, who are inflicting a costly toll on the shipping industry.

Pirates have carried out 110 attacks in the key shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden, located between the south of Yemen and the north of Somalia, and the Indian Ocean east of Somalia since the start of this year.

Last month, they captured the world's attention when they hijacked the Saudi-owned super-tanker Sirius Star, carrying two million barrels of crude oil, and demanded a 25-million-dollar ransom for the ship and its crew.

A total of 42 ships have been hijacked, 14 of which are still being held, along with more than 240 crew members.

The pirates, heavily armed and using high-powered speedboats, prey on a key maritime route leading to the Suez Canal, through which an estimated 30 percent of the world's oil transits.

The pirates are believed to number around 1,200 former and seasonal fishermen and coast guards, many of them from lawless Somalia, which has been ravaged by years of conflict and starvation.

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