There's a desperate race to rescue passengers on another Carnival cruise ship that's in trouble.

It's stranded without power in the Indian Ocean where Somali pirates have carried out attacks.

ABC's Lama Hasan has the latest from London.

This morning, new images of the Costa Allegra, stranded at sea in waters swarming with Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean.

 Seychelles Government Spokeswoman Srdjana Janosevic said, "It is a risk and we advise any ships that travel that far away from the
main islands to have armed guards onboard and this cruise ship would have those armed guards to respond if they were attacked."

No pirates have been sighted yet but you can see the passengers on the top
deck desperately waiting for help... this, after a nightmare at sea overnight when the more than 1000 passengers and crew on board, including 8 Americans, were forced to sleep in the open air.

With no air conditioning or cooking facilities, passengers were given bread, water and some fruit.

For the passengers, their dream vacation turned into a nightmare on Monday.  A fire broke out in the electrical generator room.  It was quickly
extinguished but the power was knocked out, switching off the engines and plunging the entire ship into darkness.

Running only on emergency power, it began drifting 200 miles from the shore.

This accident is another major blow to the Costa Cruise Line, owned by Carnival.  Its sister ship the Costa Concordia crashed and ran aground just 6 weeks ago, killing at least 25 people.

With no electricity on the ship, that means no toilets, no air-conditioning and no hot food.  Today a French fishing ship is towing the Allegra to the main island of Seychelles.

It is expected to reach land on Thursday.