Suez Canal news - live: Ship rescue suspended until Thursday as backlog could take ‘weeks’ to clear

Welcome to our coverage of the Suez Canal for Wednesday. The major waterway is blocked by a huge, 200,000-tonne container ship that has run aground on both banks.

A giant container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal on Tuesday, blocking one of the world’s busiest trade routes in both directions for hours, writes Kate Ng.

The 200,000-tonne Ever Given was en route from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean when it became stuck sideways in the canal at around 5.40am GMT, according to shipping agent GAC.

Data from vessel tracking site Marine Traffic shows the ship is still in the same position, with at least five tug boats attempting to pull it free.

Dr Sal Mercogliano, professor of maritime history at Campbell University, said ships had run aground in the canal before, but never one this large and not blocking the whole waterway.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Being aground as she is, all the way up on the eastern bank, and she's listing to port, it's very hard to be able to pull her off.

“They're in a very dangerous, precarious position too, with both ends of the vessel on the beach there's a potential for the vessel to sag in the middle.

“If they cannot get her off that position with the tugs, they're going to have to start removing fuel out of her, and then containers.

“But the difficulty with getting the containers off her, she's so high, so tall, that it would be very difficult to get the correct size cranes in there.”

Thought it was not immediately clear why Ever Green slewed sideways across the canal, GAC, a global shipping and logistics company, said she had suffered "a blackout while transiting in a northerly direction.”

Dr Sal Mercogliano, of Campbell University, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that this would have knocked out the ship’s rudder control.

Evergreen Marine Corp., a major Taiwan-based shipping company that operates the vessel, said in a statement that Ever Given had been overcome by strong winds as it entered the Suez Canal from the Red Sea.

A Egyptian official similarly blamed the wind. Meteorologists said high winds and a sandstorm had struck the area on Tuesday, with gusts of up to 31mph.

"All crew are safe and accounted for," said Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the Ever Given. "There have been no reports of injuries or pollution."

The management company denied the ship ever lost power.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

The image below appears to show just how deeply Ever Given’s bow might be embedded in the Suez Canal’s bank.

Large ships often have bulbous bows – a below-the-waterline feature designed to smooth the flow of water over the rest of the hull and thereby improve efficiency.

A video posted to YouTube in 2018 appears to show that the huge Ever Given has one of these. Unladen, the vessel’s lower hull is more visible.

Images released by Suez Canal authorities suggest the bulb is fully buried in the sand of the canal bank.

Social media users have, inevitably, turned the Ever Given incident into a wide range of memes after an Instagram user on another waiting cargo ship took a photo of the stranded giant.

Satellite images have been released that show an overhead view of the grounded Ever Given.

The MV Ever Given remains stuck on the bank of the Suez Canal.

Shipping tracker maps show that the traffic is now building up.