Officials had no details on what caused the ship to crash. Parts of Egypt, including the northern provinces, experienced a spate of bad weather on Sunday.
Satellite tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed that the Glory was in a single-lane stretch of the Suez Canal just south of Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea.
Leth Agencies later posted an image suggesting that the Glory was resting against the west bank of the canal, pointing south and not straddling the canal. It identified the three tugboats assisting the ship as the Port Said, Svitzer Suez 1 and Ali Shalabi.
It was not the first ship to run aground in the crucial waterway. The Panamanian-flagged Ever Given, a colossal container ship, crashed into a bank on a one-lane stretch of the canal in March 2021, blocking the waterway for six days.
The Ever Given was freed during a massive salvage operation by a fleet of tugs. The blockade created a massive traffic jam that held up $9 billion a day in global trade and strained supply chains already strained by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Ever Given debacle prompted Egyptian authorities to begin widening and deepening the southern part of the waterway where the ship hit the ground.
In August, the Singaporean-flagged oil tanker Affinity V ran aground in a single-lane stretch of the canal, blocking the waterway for five hours before being released.
The Joint Coordination Center reported that the Glory was carrying more than 65,000 tons of corn from Ukraine bound for China.
The Glory was inspected on January 3 by the Joint Coordination Center near Istanbul. In the center are Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and UN employees.
Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal is a vital link for oil, natural gas and freight. It also remains one of Egypt’s top foreign exchange earners. In 2015, the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi completed a major expansion of the canal, making it suitable for the largest ships in the world.
The Glory is 225 meters long.
Jon Gambrell, a writer from the Associated Press in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed.
