Container Terminal Back to Normal Arrival of First Gigantic Vessel Since Cole Incident [Archives:2001/05/Front Page]

According to sources in Aden, a gigantic Dutch container vessel arrived in the Aden Free Zone last Wednesday morning, marking the resumption of normal operations in the zone for the first time since the USS Cole incident.
The vessel, which was on its way to Singapore from Rotterdam, was 293 meters in length, had a carriage capacity of 51,931 tons and a depth of 12.5 meters and started to immediately load and unload containers to and from the container terminal according to the normal procedures.
General Manager of Saba Navigation Company, Mr. Hussein AL-Matloob told Yemen Times that this was the first time that such a huge vessel, traveling such a long journey, had stoped at the terminal. He also stated that there were going to be eight more such giant vessels stopping to load and unload containers to and from the Aden Container Terminal, three of which would be arriving in the first quarter. He concluded his statement by saying that the terminal is receiving ships of all sizes, with an average of 25 ships per month, from the Middle East and East Asia, and that the number is expected to grow to 35 once the new navigation routes are opened through Europe.
This indicates that the situation is slowly returning to normal, especially after extra measures were taken to secure the safety of all sorts of ships and vessels from all over the world, after the USS Cole incident had created dome doubts about security measures at the port.

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