Cairo: The Suez Canal Authority said Monday that a cargo ship carrying corn that went aground in the Egyptian waterway was refloated and canal traffic was restored. Canal services firm Leth Agencies said the vessel, MV Glory, ran aground near the city of Qantara, in the Suez Canal province of Ismailia. The firm said three canal tugboats had been working to refloat the vessel.
Officials had no details on what caused the ship to hit ground. Parts of Egypt, including its northern provinces, experienced a wave of bad weather Sunday. Satellite tracking data analyzed 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. Leth Agencies later posted a graphic that suggested the Glory was against the west bank of the canal, pointed south and not wedged across the channel.
It identified the three tugs aiding the vessel as the Port Said, Svitzer Suez 1 and Ali Shalabi. It wasn't the first vessel to run aground in the crucial waterway. The Panama-flagged Ever Given, a colossal container ship, crashed into a bank on a single-lane stretch of the canal in March 2021, blocking the waterway for six days.