- A US Navy aircraft carrier collided with a merchant vessel off the coast of Egypt on Wednesday.
- The collision did not endanger USS Harry S. Truman, a Navy official said Thursday.
- The Truman was fresh off several weeks of combat operations against the Houthis in the Red Sea.
A US Navy aircraft carrier collided with a large merchant vessel in the Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday night.
The Nimitz-class carrier USS Harry S. Truman was “involved in a collision” with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M, at around 11:46 p.m. local time while operating near Egypt’s Port Said, a Navy spokesperson said on Thursday.
Cmdr. Timothy Gorman, a spokesperson for the US Sixth Fleet, which oversees Navy operations in the Mediterranean, said the collision did not endanger the Truman.
“There are no reports of flooding or injuries,” Gorman said in a statement. “The propulsion plants are unaffected and in a safe and stable condition. The incident is under investigation. More information will be released as it becomes available.”
The Truman was until recently operating in the Red Sea, where it deployed as part of the US Navy’s efforts to defend key shipping lanes from attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The Truman strike group, which consists of the aircraft carrier and several other warships, sailed into the Middle East region in December. After several weeks of combat operations, the carrier and its escorts departed the Red Sea and made a port call in the Mediterranean earlier this month.
Port Said, where Wednesday’s collision occurred, is at the mouth of the Suez Canal, which leads to the Red Sea. It’s unclear if the Truman was heading back to the Middle East when the incident took place.
According to publicly available shipping data, Besiktas-M is a nearly 200-meter-long Panama-flagged bulk carrier. As of Thursday evening local time, the vessel was spotted in the vicinity of Port Said.
Collisions involving Navy vessels are rare, especially for aircraft carriers, but they do happen. There have been several crashes in recent years, including two involving destroyers and merchant ships in 2017 that were fatal to members of the warship crews.
