Efforts are continuing to refloat the Ever Given, a 400m-long (1,300ft) container ship which has been blocking the Suez Canal in Egypt since Tuesday.
Dredgers have been clearing sand and mud away from the bow of the vessel, while tugboats and the ship’s winches are being used in an attempt to move it.
On Thursday, the Ever Given’s owner, Japanese firm Shoei Kinsen, apologised for the effects the incident has had on traffic waiting to go through the canal.
It said it was doing its utmost, along with local authorities and the vessel’s operators, to resolve the problem, but warned that it was extremely difficult.
image captionThe Ever Given, which operated by Taiwanese transport company Evergreen Marine, is wedged diagonally across the canalimage captionA flotilla of tugs has been trying to move the 200,000-tonne vesselimage captionDredgers have been clearing sand and mud away from the Ever Given’s hullimage captionMore than 150 other vessels were waiting to pass through the canal on Thursdayimage captionA satellite image showed the Ever Given blocking the canalimage captionOfficials from the Suez Canal Authority visited the stranded ship on Wednesday to work out a rescue planimage captionThe stranded ship is visible from farmland near the Suez Canalimage captionLast year the Suez Canal was used by an average of 51.5 ships per dayimage captionThe Suez Canal, pictured here in 2017, is 193km (120 miles) long and incorporates three natural lakes
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