CAIRO: Egypt's Suez Canal, where frantic efforts were being made on Wednesday to free a giant container ship, opened 150 years ago.It has been regularly expanded and modernised, and is today capable of accommodating some of the world's largest supertankers.
By the time it was nationalised by Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1956, it was 175km long and 14m deep, and could take tankers with a capacity of about 27,000 tonnes to a depth of 10.7 metres. It meant that the canal could handle supertankers with a capacity of about 217,000 tonnes, some of the biggest in the world, that went up to 20.1m deep in the water.Traffic is expected to almost double by 2023, with two-way circulation also reducing waiting times, the authority says.
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