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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BJP workers allegedly attack children during Christmas carol roadshow in Kerala’s Palakkad: Reports
Palakkad: A group of children celebrating Christmas through a carol roadshow was allegedly attacked by BJP workers in Kerala’s Palakkad district on Sunday night.
According to local reports, the incident occurred in Pudussery area of Palakkad, where over 25 children, mostly aged around 13, were moving from house to house singing Christmas carols. Reports state that a BJP worker identified as Ashwin Raj, along with others, allegedly assaulted the children and vandalised their musical equipment.
According to the police and eyewitness accounts, the children were using a band set that belonged to a local CPI(M) office, which had the party’s name written on it.
Allegedly objecting to this, the accused and his associates reportedly lured the children on the pretext of offering them money and then assaulted them. The band set used by the children was also smashed.
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The Town Police have arrested Ashwin Raj, a local BJP worker who has been named as the prime accused in the case. Efforts are underway to trace and arrest the remaining accused who fled the scene.
Speaking to the media, one of the injured children said, “We were using the band just for fun. When they saw that it had CPM written on it, they took us aside and beat us.”
"We had given the band set that was in our office out of love when the children asked for it. The fact that these young children, who do not know the intricacies of politics, were attacked shows the criminal mentality of the BJP workers," local CPIM leaders expressed outrage.
A police officer told PTI that the arrested accused is already booked under the Kerala Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act (KAAPA).
The sections invoked include Section 192 (provocation with intent to cause a riot), Section 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), and Section 110 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), police added.
