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Passengers spend night on Baltic Sea ferry that ran agroundA Baltic Sea ferry with 331 passengers and a crew of 98 has run aground in the Aland Islands between Finland and Sweden amid heavy storm winds
HELSINKI– A Baltic Sea ferry with 331 passengers and a crew of 98 run aground in heavy storm winds Saturday in the Aland Islands archipelago between Finland and Sweden.
Finnish authorities said there were “no lives in immediate danger” and the vessel, inspected by divers, wasn't leaking.
The Finnish coast guard tweeted Saturday afternoon that the Viking Line ferry that runs between the Finnish port city of Turku and Swedish capital Stockholm hit ground just off the port of Mariehamn, the capital of the Aland Islands.
The coast guard tweeted a photo showing the M/S Viking Grace stuck just off shore.
“Viking Gracehas ran aground in front of Mariehamn.Firmly grounded, no leaks….The first rescue units are on site,” the tweet said.
A spokeswoman for ferry operator Viking Line, Johanna Boijer-Svahnstrom, told Finnish public broadcaster YLE that the passengers would stay overnight on the vessel before getting evacuated to shore on Sunday.
The Finnish coast guard said it would be monitoring the ship throughout the night and rescue units were on stand-by mode.
The vessel was en route from Stockholm to Turku with a scheduled stop at Mariehamn. Strong storm winds prevailed in the area at the time.
Coast guard officials told Finnish media that the Viking Grace, a large vessel capable of carrying up to 2,800 passengers, was near the shore when for some reason it seemed to have floated toward land.
Viking Line CEO Jan Hanses told YLE that a strong gust of wind likely “pushed the ship to shore” in the narrow passage close to Mariehamn port.
The number of passengers aboard the Viking Grace was exceptionally low due to COVID-19 travel restrictions currently in place in the Nordic countries.
In September, Viking Line’s M/S Amorella passenger ferry also ran aground in the Aland Islands, an autonomous Finnish territory that consists of thousands of named and unnamed islands. Its shallow waters and narrow passages are particularly tricky to navigate for large ships.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/baltic-sea-ferry-runs-aground-finnish-waters-injuries-74334236
Elephant Rescued After Falling Into A Well In Indian VillageIt took more than 12 hours, but an elephant in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu has been rescued after plunging into a well.
The elephant had wandered into the village of Dharmapuri from a nearby forest when it fell into the well, which an official for the Indian Forest Service estimated to be about 50 feet deep. The well did not have a barrier and had been obscured by bushes.
Locals from the village alerted authorities about the trapped animal early on Thursday. They dropped banana leaves down the well for the elephant to eat, as rescuers worked throughout the night to free it, the BBC reports.
Forest officials brought in a crane to retrieve the elephant. Footage of the rescue showed the elephant strapped in by belts and suspended upside down as the crane lifted it to safety. Doctors helped rescuers sedate the animal after it attacked pipes they were using to pump water out of the well, a district forest officer told Reuters.
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/22/937770867/elephant-rescued-after-falling-into-a-well-in-indian-village