First Vessel Passes Channel Opened to Aid Baltimore Bridge Cleanup

A Maryland Natural Resources Police helicopter flies overhead as wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge rests on the container ship Dali, Saturday, March 30, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
A Maryland Natural Resources Police helicopter flies overhead as wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge rests on the container ship Dali, Saturday, March 30, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
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First Vessel Passes Channel Opened to Aid Baltimore Bridge Cleanup

A Maryland Natural Resources Police helicopter flies overhead as wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge rests on the container ship Dali, Saturday, March 30, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
A Maryland Natural Resources Police helicopter flies overhead as wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge rests on the container ship Dali, Saturday, March 30, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

A tugboat pushing a fuel barge became the first vessel to sail through a temporary channel opened beside the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore harbor, authorities overseeing the cleanup operation said late Monday.
Two small, temporary channels are being opened for ships helping clean up the site of the catastrophe.
Officials said the channels would initially only be open to smaller vessels involved in the cleanup operation, and would not be big enough to allow cargo and container ships to pass through.
The tugboat Crystal Coast pushing a fuel barge transited the first temporary channel at 3:00 pm Monday (1900 GMT Monday), becoming the first vessel to transit since the bridge collapsed last Tuesday after being struck by an out-of-control cargo ship.
The barge was used to supply jet fuel to Dover Air Force Base for the Department of Defense, the joint information center for the agencies overseeing the cleanup operation said in a statement.
A second, slightly deeper channel will be opened in the coming days, Maryland governor Wes Moore told reporters.
The opening of the temporary route "will help us to get more vessels in the water around the site of the collapse," he told a press conference.
This will allow more workers to pitch in toward the mammoth task of clearing the harbor of the bridge, which was destroyed in seconds last Tuesday when the Singapore-flagged Dali lost power and hit a bridge support column, killing six people.
Shipping in and out of Baltimore -- one of the United States' busiest ports -- has been halted, with the waterway impassable due to the sprawling wreckage.
The authorities hope that removing the bridge -- by cutting it into smaller sections and lifting them out -- will help rescuers recover all the victims' bodies and eventually reopen the crucial shipping lane.
On Friday, President Joe Biden is due to visit the port city, which is about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Washington, the White House announced.
The first temporary channel has a depth of at least 11 feet (3.4 meters), a 264-foot horizontal clearance and vertical clearance of 96 feet, the multi-agency task force overseeing the operation said in a statement.
This temporary channel "is not big enough for any container or cargo ships to pass through," US Coast Guard petty officer Carmen Caver told AFP.
"They're working on a plan to make it slowly open to more and more people," she added.
Work was underway on opening a second channel which would allow larger vessels with a draft 15 to 16 feet, the multi-agency task force overseeing the operation said.
The port of Baltimore is a key hub for the auto industry, handling almost 850,000 autos and light trucks last year -- more than any other US port -- according to Maryland state figures.
It also ranked first for farm and construction machinery, as well as imported sugar and gypsum, and second for coal exports.
The operation to recover the missing bodies and to reopen the port to larger vessels has been hampered by the challenge of diving around the structure, according to Moore.
"We're talking about water that is so murky and so filled with debris that divers cannot see any more than a foot or two in front of them," he said.
"We have to move fast, but we cannot be careless," he added.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."