New attempts planned to free huge vessel stuck in Suez Canal

Bishkek, March 27, 2021. / Kabar /. A giant container ship remained stuck sideways in Egypt’s Suez Canal for a fifth day Saturday, as authorities prepared to make new attempts to free the vessel and reopen a crucial east-west waterway for global shipping, Associated Press reports.

The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground Tuesday in the narrow canal that runs between Africa and the Sinai Peninsula.

The massive vessel got stuck in a single-lane stretch of the canal, about six kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez.

In a press conference Saturday in Suez, the head of the canal authority, Lt. Gen. Osama Rabei, told reporters that they could not lay out a set timetable for when the ship might be dislodged. He said he remained hopeful that a dredging operation could free the ship without having to resort to lighten it by removing its cargo.

“It’s difficult to deal with easily,” he said.

A maritime traffic jam grew to around 321 vessels near Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea, Port Suez on the Red Sea and in the canal system on Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, according to Rabei.

Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given, said the company hoped to pull the container ship free within days using a combination of heavy tugboats, dredging and high tides.