Massive cargo ship becomes wedged, blocks Egypt's Suez Canal
Ismailia (Egypt), Mar 24: A skyscraper-sized container ship has become wedged across Egypt's Suez Canal and blocked all traffic in the vital waterway, officials said Wednesday, threatening to disrupt a global shipping system already strained by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground Tuesday in the narrow, man-made canal dividing continental Africa from the Sinai Peninsula.
Images showed the ship's bow was touching the eastern wall, while its stern looked lodged against the western wall an extraordinary event that experts said they had never heard of happening before in the canal's 150-year history.
Tugboats strained Wednesday to try to nudge the obstruction out of the way as ships hoping to enter the waterway began lining up in the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
But it remained unclear when the route, through which around 10% of world trade flows and which is particularly crucial for the transport of oil, would reopen. One official warned it could take at least two days. In the meantime, there were concerns that idling ships could become targets for attacks.
The Suez Canal will not spare any efforts to ensure the restoration of navigation and to serve the movement of global trade, vowed Lt. Gen. Ossama Rabei, head of the Suez Canal Authority.
Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the Ever Given, said all 20 members of the crew were safe and that there had been "no reports of injuries or pollution.
It wasn't immediately clear what caused the Ever Given to become wedged on Tuesday morning. GAC, a global shipping and logistics company, said the ship had experienced a blackout without elaborating.
Bernhard Schulte, however, denied the ship ever lost power.
Evergreen Marine Corp., a major Taiwan-based shipping company that operates the ship, said in a statement that the Ever Given had been overcome by strong winds as it entered the canal from the Red Sea but none of its containers had sunk.
An Egyptian official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to brief journalists, similarly blamed a strong wind. Egyptian forecasters said high winds and a sandstorm plagued the area Tuesday, with winds gusting as much as 50 kph (30 mph).
However, it remained unclear how winds of that speed alone would have been able to push a fully laden vessel weighing some 220,000 tons.
A pilot from Egypt's canal authority typically boards a ship to guide it through the waterway, though the ship's captain retains ultimate authority over the vessel, said Ranjith Raja, a lead analyst at the data firm Refinitiv. The vessel entered the canal some 45 minutes before it became stuck, moving at 12.8 knots (about 24 kph, 15 mph) just before the crash, he said.
An image posted to Instagram by a user on another waiting cargo ship appeared to show the Ever Given wedged across the canal as shown in satellite images and data. A backhoe appeared to be digging into the sand bank under its bow in an effort to free it.
The Egyptian official said tugboats hoped to refloat the ship and that the operation would take at least two days. The ship ran aground some 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the southernly mouth of the canal near the city of Suez, an area of the canal that's a single lane.
That could have a major knock-on effect for global shipping moving between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, warned Salvatore R. Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner and associate professor of history at North Carolina's Campbell University.
Every day, 50 vessels on average go through that canal, so the closing of the canal means no vessels are transiting north and south, Mercogliano told the AP. "Every day the canal is closed ... container ships and tankers are not delivering food, fuel and manufactured goods to Europe and goods are not being exported from Europe to the Far East.
Already, some 30 vessels waited at Egypt's Great Bitter Lake midway on the canal, while some 40 idled in the Mediterranean near Port Said and another 30 at Suez in the Red Sea, according to canal service provider Leth Agencies. That included seven vessels carrying some 5 million barrels of crude oil, Refinitiv said.
In addition to the economic implications, security experts warned that idling ships in the Red Sea could be targets after a series of attacks against shipping in the Mideast amid tensions between Iran and the U.S.
All vessels should consider adopting a heightened posture of alertness if forced to remain static within the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden, warned private marine intelligence firm Dryad Global.
The closure also could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Mideast. The price of international benchmark Brent crude jumped nearly 2.9% to 62.52 a barrel Wednesday.
The Ever Given, built in 2018 with a length of nearly 400 meters (a quarter mile) and a width of 59 meters (193 feet), is among the largest cargo ships in the world. It can carry some 20,000 containers at a time. It previously had been at ports in China before heading toward Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal provides a crucial link for oil, natural gas and cargo. It also remains one of Egypt's top foreign currency earners. In 2015, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi completed a major expansion of the canal, allowing it to accommodate the world's largest vessels. However, the Ever Given ran aground south of that new portion of the canal.
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International Federation of Journalists says 128 journalists killed worldwide in 2025
Majority killed in conflict zones
Brussels, Belgium: A total of 128 journalists lost their lives across the world in 2025, with more than half of the deaths recorded in the Middle East, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said on Thursday.
According to the global press body, the Palestinian territories accounted for the highest number of fatalities, with 56 media professionals killed as Israel’s war with Hamas continued in Gaza. IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger described the situation as unprecedented, saying the concentration of deaths in such a small geographical area over a short period had not been seen before.
“This is not just a statistic. It is a global red alert for our colleagues,” Bellanger told AFP, warning that the scale of violence against journalists reflected a deepening crisis for press freedom worldwide.
Journalists were also killed in several other countries during the year, including Yemen, Ukraine, Sudan, Peru and India. This shows the risks faced by media workers in both conflict zones and politically volatile regions.
Bellanger also criticised the lack of accountability for attacks on journalists, arguing that impunity continued to fuel violence against the press. Without justice, he said, those responsible for targeting journalists are emboldened to continue.
The IFJ report said 533 journalists were currently imprisoned, a figure that has more than doubled over the past five years. China remained the world’s largest jailer of journalists, with 143 reporters detained, including several in Hong Kong, where the imposition of national security laws has drawn criticism from Western governments.
The IFJ noted that its death toll is typically higher than figures released by other watchdogs due to differences in methodology. Its count for 2025 includes nine journalists who died in accidents. In comparison, Reporters Without Borders reported 67 journalists killed in the line of duty during the year, while UNESCO placed the number at 93.
