Officials: The ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal has been re-floated

CAIRO (AP) — The Suez Canal Authority said Monday that a cargo ship loaded with corn rims in the Egyptian waterway has been refloated and canal traffic has returned.

The canal services company, Leth Agencies, said that the MV Glory ran aground near the city of Qantara, in the Suez Canal Governorate, in Ismailia. The company said three tugboats were working to refloat the ship.

Officials did not have details of what caused the ship to hit the ground. Parts of Egypt, including the northern governorates, experienced a wave of bad weather on Sunday.

Satellite tracking data analyzed by the Associated Press showed Al-Majd in one lane of the Suez Canal, south of Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea.

The Leth Agencies later published a chart indicating that Glory was opposite the west bank of the canal, pointed south and not wedged across the canal. The three tugboats that were assisting the ship were identified as Port Said, Svetzer Suez 1 and Ali Shalaby.

It was not the first ship to run aground in the important waterway. The massive, Panamanian-flagged container ship collided with a bank on a one-lane stretch of the canal in March 2021, blocking the waterway for six days.

The Ever Given is liberated in a gigantic rescue by a fleet of tugboats. The ban has caused massive traffic jams that have halted $9 billion a day in global trade and strained supply chains already burdened by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Ever Given disaster prompted the Egyptian authorities to begin widening and deepening the southern part of the waterway where the ship struck land.

In August, the Singapore-flagged oil tanker Affinity V ran aground in one lane of the canal, blocking the waterway for five hours before being freed.

The JCC listed The Glory as carrying more than 65,000 metric tons of corn from Ukraine destined for China.

The JCC inspected the Glory off Istanbul on January 3. The center includes staff from Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Nations.

The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, provides an important link for oil, natural gas, and cargo. It also remains one of the largest sources of foreign currency in Egypt. In 2015, the government of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi completed a major expansion of the canal, allowing it to accommodate the largest ships in the world.

The Glory is 225 meters (738 ft) long.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed.