A giant container ship remained stuck sideways in Egypt’s Suez Canal for a fifth day Saturday, as authorities made new attempts to free the vessel and reopen a crucial waterway whose blockage is disrupting global shipping and trade. Meanwhile, the head of the Suez Canal Authority said strong winds were “not the only cause” for the Ever Given running aground on Tuesday, appearing to push back against conflicting assessments offered by others. Lt. Gen. Osama Rabei told a news conference Saturday that an investigation was ongoing but did not rule out human or technical error. The massive Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, got stuck in a single-lane stretch of the canal, about six kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez. Rabei said he could not predict when the ship might be dislodged. A Dutch salvage firm is attempting to refloat the vessel with tugboats and dredgers, taking advantage of high tides. Rabei said he remained hopeful that dredging could free the ship without having to resort to removing its cargo, but added that “we are in a difficult situation, it’s a bad incident.” Also read: Egypt races to dislodge giant vessel blocking Suez Canal Asked about when they expected to free the vessel and reopen the canal, he said: "I can’t say because I do not know.” Shoei Kisen, the company that owns the vessel, said it was considering removing containers if other refloating efforts failed. Two attempts to free the vessel failed Saturday, according to Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, the ship's management company, and a canal services provider, Leth agencies, despite hopes that a high tide might give the vesslela boost. Bernhard Schulte had said earlier that “significant progress” was made late Friday at the ship’s stern where its rudder was released from sediment. It said around a dozen tugboats were working Saturday alongside dredging operations that were removing sand and mud from around the left side of the vessel’s bow. Some 9,000 tons of ballast water had been already removed from the vessel, the canal chairman said. Since the blockage began, a maritime traffic jam had grown to more than 320 vessels waiting on both ends of the Suez Canal and in the Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the waterway. Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given said Friday said the company hoped to pull the container ship free within days using a combination of heavy tugboats, dredging and high tides. He told the Dutch current affairs show Nieuwsuur on Friday night that the front of the ship is stuck in sandy clay, but the rear “has not been completely pushed into the clay and that is positive because you can use the rear end to pull it free.” Also read: What we know about a ship blocking the Suez Canal “The combination of the (tug) boats we will have there, more ground dredged away and the high tide, we hope that will be enough to get the ship free somewhere early next week,” he said. If that doesn’t work, the company will remove hundreds of containers from the front of the ship to lighten it, effectively lifting the ship to make it easier to pull free, Berdowski said. A crane was already on its way that can lift the containers off the ship, he said. Bernhard Schulte also confirmed that a Dutch and an Italian tugboat were scheduled to arrive in Egypt on Sunday. Egypt Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly called the ship's predicament "a very extraordinary incident,” in his first public comments on the blockage. The Suez Canal Authority organized the first media trip Saturday to the site where the vessel was stuck. From a distance, a flotilla of tugboats and other salvage equipment appeared minuscule compared to the vessel, a reminder of the scale of effort needed to reopen the canal. Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement said Friday that its initial investigation showed the vessel ran aground due to strong winds and ruled out mechanical or engine failure. However, Rabei seemed to be pushing back against that assessment Saturday, saying that all possibilities, including human and technical errors, were being investigated. Also read: Experts say Med Sea altered by Suez Canal's invasive species A prolonged closure of the crucial waterway would cause delays in the global shipment chain. Some 19,000 vessels passed through the canal last year, according to official figures. About 10% of world trade flows through the canal. The closure could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East. Some vessels began changing course and dozens of ships were still en route to the waterway, according to the data firm Refinitiv. It remained unclear how long the blockage would last. Even after reopening the canal that links factories in Asia to consumers in Europe, the waiting containers are likely to arrive at busy ports, forcing them to face additional delays before offloading.

A giant backhoe and a squadron of tugboats look minuscule against the cargo ship’s bulk, demonstrating the enormity of the challenge at hand: freeing the wedged, skyscraper-sized container ship that has blocked the entire width of the Suez Canal and created a major traffic jam on one of the world’s most crucial trade routes. The tugs and diggers toiled on Thursday as over 150 vessels carrying goods to destinations across the world on tight schedules remained trapped on either end of the canal, which links the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Over its 150-year history, Egypt’s Suez Canal has seen wars and crises — but nothing quite like the stranding of the Ever Given. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? That remains murky. The vessel entered the canal from the Red Sea on Tuesday morning and ran aground 45 minutes later. The ship’s operator and Egyptian officials blamed winds gusting as much as 50 kilometers per hour (30 miles per hour), along with a sandstorm sweeping the area. Cargo ships have grown in recent years to take on more containers as fuel prices have risen because big boats burn less fuel per container moved. Some have wondered if the ultra-large size of the Ever Given was a factor. While the supersize of ships can increase their risk of running aground in the Suez Canal, boats just as big buffeted by winds just as strong have passed through the waterway without incident before. Instead, it’s likely that “a combination of factors” was at play, said Ian Woods, a marine cargo lawyer and partner with the firm Clyde & Co. “There’s the exposure to the elements, potential for a loss of power, potential for steering problems,” Woods said. “We’d expect a full investigation.” The obstruction could prove embarrassing for Egypt, where the waterway long has been a symbol of national pride. President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi poured $8.2 billion into a lavish expansion of the canal that was unveiled in 2015. However, the Ever Given got stuck just south of that new section. HOW WILL THEY FIX THIS? So far, dredgers and tugboats haven’t been able to free the ship. An expert salvage team, whose job it is to respond to boat-related disasters, flew from the Netherlands to the canal on Thursday to join the efforts. Already, it seems the ship’s massive weight, some 220,000 tons, could make it impossible to dislodge and float. To lighten the load, the team says it may have to remove at least some of the ship’s containers and drain the vessel of the water serving as ballast before further dredging the area and then trying again to nudge the ship using tugboats. Officials had indicated initially they didn’t want to do that because the unloading itself could take days or weeks. WHY DOES IT MATTER? Over 10% of global trade, including 7% of the world’s oil, passes through the canal. After the blockage, the price of international benchmark Brent crude shot up some 3% to $63 a barrel. Goods passing through the canal are typically moving from east to west. In addition to oil, liquified natural gas from the Persian Gulf and furniture, clothes and supermarket basics from China use the canal to avoid taking a circuitous 5,000-kilometer (3,1000-mile) route around Africa. Shipping journal Lloyd’s List estimates that the closed waterway is tying up billions of dollars of goods each day the canal is closed — at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is already causing demand in consumer goods to surge. Not only will deliveries be delayed, but the jam also prevents the return of empty containers back to Asia, exacerbating a container shortage caused by the pandemic’s disruptions to shipping. “It’s almost like a ketchup bottle,” said Lars Jensen, chief executive of SeaIntelligence Consulting. “The longer this lasts, the higher risk that we are going to see major congestion problems in the European ports.” WHAT IS THE WORLD’S REACTION? While the real-world consequences of the jam are serious, many also noted the absurdity of the situation in a seemingly endless flood of social media memes. In one viral post, the gigantic ship was captioned “my tasks,” and the comparatively puny backhoe “me, dutifully chipping away at my tasks.” In another, the boat was “your first draft” and the backhoe “editors.”