A giant container ship remained stuck sideways in Egypt’s Suez Canal for a fifth day on Saturday, as authorities prepared to make new attempts to free the vessel and reopen a crucial east-west waterway for global shipping. The Ever Given, a Panama-flagged ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, ran aground Tuesday in the narrow canal that runs between Africa and the Sinai Peninsula.

The massive vessel got stuck in a single-lane stretch of the canal, about six kilometres north of the southern entrance, near the city of Suez. Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the salvage firm hired to extract the Ever Given, said the company hoped to pull the container ship free within days using a combination of heavy tugboats, dredging and high tides.