The video which shows the huge traffic jam caused by the ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal

Huge freighter that ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal, blocking traffic on an east-west waterway crucial to global shipping, caused a huge traffic jam in which hundreds of merchant ships waited on both sides of the waterway.

The MV Ever Given, a Panamanian-flagged vessel that carries containers between Asia and Europe, got stuck in the canal.

At first, it wasn’t clear what had transformed Ever Given on the channel. GAC, a global transportation and logistics company, described the ship suffered a “breakdown on its journey north” and did not elaborate.

According to the agency Bloomberg, after the incident, more than 100 ships are waiting to cross the Suez Canal.

A video attempts to show the huge line of freighters waiting their turn to pass. However, the images cannot capture the scale of all the merchant ships that are behind each other.

The canal is 190 kilometers long, 24 meters deep and 205 meters wide. Staff working on site have already made several unsuccessful attempts to get the MV Ever Given back on track.

The ship, 400 meters long, 59 meters wide and capable of carrying up to 20,000 containers, was destined for Rotterdam in the Netherlands.

European and US refineries that depend on the waterway for Middle Eastern oil cargoes could be forced to seek replacement supplies if the lockdown persists., which could increase the prices of alternative qualities. At the same time, the flow of oil from the North Sea fields to Asia will be stopped.

An image posted to Instagram by a user on another freighter shows how Ever Given is blocked. The ship appeared to be stranded about 6 kilometers north of the southern mouth near the town of Suez.

“The ship in front of us ran aground crossing the canal and is now stranded. It looks like we’re going to be here for a while… ”Julianne Cona, the New York engineer who took the photo, wrote on her Instagram account.

Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal is a crucial link for the transport of oil, natural gas and goods from east to west.. About 10% of world trade passes through the waterway and it remains one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign exchange. In 2015, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi completed a major expansion of the canal, allowing it to accommodate the largest ships in the world.

Through the Suez Canal, inaugurated in 1869, passes 10% of international maritime trade. Almost 19,000 ships used it last year, according to the Suez Canal Authority (SCA).

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