"Ever Given" Leaves the Suez Canal

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Cairo released the giant container ship "Ever Given" on Wednesday. Since late March, the ship had been impounded by Egyptian authorities after it disrupted navigation in the Suez Canal when it wedged across the strategic waterway. This comes after Egyptian authorities signed a settlement deal with the ship's Japanese owners. The "Ever Given" set sail after being impounded for 107 days.

An official in the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) declared that the ship was impounded in the "al-Buhayrat al-Murra" area, adding that it will cross the canal "at the northern end to the Red Sea, in the south."

SCA Head Oussama Rabi' and the Japanese owners of the ship signed a settlement agreement that includes compensation for Egypt for the 6-day closure of the Canal.

Rabi' also stated in a press conference that the SCA has received "most of the compensation" and will receive the rest in this coming month.

Rabi' had also said that the SCA would receive a 75-tonne tugboat in addition to financial compensation. The family of one of the SCA's workers who died during work on freeing the ship will also receive compensation.

Before signing the settlement, SCA attorney Khaled Abou Baker stated on national TV: "We are bound by confidentiality clauses regarding the negotiations and the results thereof," he added, "but I can say that we most assuredly preserved the SCA's rights in full."

Egyptian authorities had announced last Sunday that it had reached a "settlement agreement" with Japanese "Shoei Kisen Kaisha," the ship's owners, that states that the vessel must be released in return for a compensation for losses and damages to Cairo from the Canal's closing, without any of the two parties announcing the cost of the settlement.

In late May, the SCA said that the compensation they were asking for in return for losses, damages, and lost profits caused, by the ship being wedged in the Canal, has gone down from $916 million to $550 million.