New Delhi: A cargo vessel ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal, a canal services firm said. The Joint Coordination Center listed that the MV Glory was carrying over 65,000 metric tons of corn from Ukraine bound for China, as reported by the news agency AP. The ship grounded in Suez Canal was refloated later the shipping agency confirmed. The vessel ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal on Monday, a canal services firm said. However, It was not immediately clear whether canal traffic was affected.
According to the Leth Agencies, the vessel, MV Glory, ran aground near the city of Qantara, in the Suez Canal province of Ismailia. The firm said canal tugs were trying to refloat the vessel, AP reported.
The officials had no details on what caused the vessel to run aground. Parts of Egypt, including its northern provinces, experienced a wave of bad weather Sunday. Satellite tracking data analysed by The Associated Press showed the Glory in a single-lane stretch of the Suez Canal just south of Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea. A Canal Authority spokesperson refused to speak on the matter and said that a statement would be released.
This was not the first vessel to run aground in the crucial waterway. The Panama-flagged Ever Given, a container ship, crashed into a bank on a single-lane stretch of the canal in March 2021. The waterway was blocked for six days due to the incident. According to AP, the Ever Given was freed in a massive salvage operation by a flotilla of tugboats. The blockage ended up creating a massive traffic jam that held up $9 billion a day in global trade and strained supply chains already burdened by the coronavirus pandemic.
(With agencies’ Inputs)