Traffic In Suez Canal Resumes After Stranded Ship Refloated

Canal authority says shipping traffic through Egypt’s Suez Canal resumed Monday after a giant container ship which had been blocking the busy waterway for almost a week was refloated.

The 400-metre long Ever Given became jammed diagonally across a southern section of the canal in high winds early last Tuesday, halting traffic on the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia.

Live footage on a local television station showed the ship surrounded by tug boats moving slowly in the centre of the canal on Monday afternoon.

After dredging and excavation work over the weekend, rescue workers from the SCA and a team from Dutch firm Smit Salvage had succeeded in partially refloating the ship earlier on Monday using tug boats.