On Tuesday, the Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority Osama Rabie announced they have successfully managed to recover a sunken tugboat, according to a statement.
A Suez Canal tugboat sank on Saturday and one of its crew was missing after it collided with a Hong Kong-flagged LPG tanker though shipping traffic in the strategically important waterway was largely unaffected, the canal authority said.
Rabie praised the efforts of the marine rescue team and all the workers participating in the rescue operation from the various departments, who combined their efforts to complete the marine rescue work efficiently and within a short time, without affecting the navigation movement in the canal.
He noted that they faced several challenges during their mission which included the intensity of water currents, lack of visibility, as well as diving at great depths, reaching 27 meters.
Rabie explained that the process of lifting and removing the tug “Fahd” required several procedures, starting with surveying the area of the collision accident to locate the sunken locomotive, then securing the location of the tug with warning and guiding flaps to enable the passing ships to resume their crossing safely, after which the work of lifting the sunken tug began.
He confirmed that the navigation movement in the canal operates regularly from both directions and was not affected by the rescue work, as the canal witnessed during the past two days, the crossing of 146 ships from both directions, with a total net tonnage of 8.4 million tons.
