About 100 Ukrainian refugees who have been staying on the 'Poseidon' in Urk for two years will soon have to move temporarily. The ship will undergo an inspection and maintenance. Another ship, the 'Alessia', will temporarily arrive in the port of Urk, which is slightly larger. The residents have already started preparations for the temporary move this week together with Caritas employees. The actual move to the 'Alessia' will take place on April 15, 20ß24. After the inspection and maintenance, the 'Poseidon' will return to the port of Urk in May. Then the Ukrainians will move back.
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MANANNAN
Some passengers on the 'Manannan' were kept on board for more than three hours when the vessel docked after wind and tidal conditions in the River Mersey made it unsafe to disembark. The ferry arrived and docked in Liverpool on April 8, 2024, at about 09:45 a.m. BST. But letting the passengers off the vessel was paused by the ship's master after the conditions worsened, affecting the motion of the vessel next to the berth. However, the vessel left on its return journey to Douglas at 2:45 p.m.
Port au Prince
On April 4, 2024, the containerm/v 'Magalie' ((IMO: 7413892)) was hijacked by members of the 5 Seconds gang in the Varreux terminal neighborhood at Port-au-Prince. The gang members took all crew members hostage and stole one-sixth of the cargo, which included rice, Haiti's main staple food. On April 8, Haiti's National Police stormed the ship and engaged in a five-hour gunfight. The operation resulted in the injury of two officers and an unspecified number of gang members being killed. The vessel was retrieved safely, and Haiti's Port Authority assisted in transporting the onboard personnel. The status of the crew members was unknown. The ship was pulled away from the shore by a tug. Gangs have frequently attacked Port-au-Prince's waterfront operations, causing disruptions to the supply and relief flow. Last month, vandals destroyed the Varreux Power Plant and briefly took over and looted the Caribbean Port Services (CPS), the biggest container terminal in the country. The UN's Famine Early Warning System Network states that the terminal's waterside activities may remain closed for several weeks.
Kaliningrad
Ukraine's military intelligence directorate, the GUR, has claimed responsibility for a serious fire aboard the Russian corvette 'Serpukhov' at the port of Kaliningrad, a Buyan-M class vessel. GUR provided what appeared to be a schematic of the vessel's internal spaces, and a brief video of an incendiary device going off. The agency said that the 'Serpukhov' sustained substantial damage from the fire, with its means of communication and automation were completely destroyed. The Buyan class is designed for coastal operations and are heavily armed for their size, carrying up to eight Kalibr or Oniks antiship missiles and up to eight surface-to-air missiles. This was a deep strike behind the Russian lines. The agency's drones have hit Russian oil refineries up to 750 miles away from Ukraine's borders, and have taken approximately 14 percent of Russia's refining capacity offline. The latest strike - a claimed attack on a product pipeline - allegedly disabled all product tanker loadings at the occupied port of Azov. The GUR has also mounted a successful campaign against the Russian Black Sea Fleet, damaging or destroying a claimed one-third of its force and confining the rest to the relative safety of Novorossiysk. The sister ship 'Velykyi' Ustyug was likely damaged by a Ukrainian drone early in the Russian invasion. In June 2022 the 'Ustyug' was photographed in tow to a shipyard, showing signs of fragmentation damage along her port side. Report with video: https://maritime-executive.com/article/ukrainian-spy-agency-claims-it-lit-a-fire-on-a-russian-corvette
AURORA
On April 10, 2024, a passenger of the 'Aurora', en route from Southampton, UK, to Lisbon, needed to be medevaced off the Spanish coast. The CCS Vigo of Salvamento Marítimo mobilized the SAR vessel 'Salvamar Mirach', which rendezvoused with the ship east of the Islas Cíes and took the patient to the ferry dock in Vigo, where an ambulance was waiting for further transport to hospital. The ship berthed at the cruise terminal in Lisbon on April 11 at 8.20 a.m.