‘Suspicious’ crash of MSC cruise ship claims life in Norway’s deepest fjord

NEW DELHI: In a tragic incident on Thursday, a male passenger in his late 50s fell overboard from the cruise ship MSC Euribia while it was sailing through Norway’s Sognefjord, known as the ‘King of the Fjords’. The man’s body was recovered by a rescue helicopter about an hour after the incident and transported to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to a report in the New York Post.

The exact circumstances of the passenger’s fall are still unclear, but authorities are investigating the incident as a “suspicious death.” A police officer said: “It could have been an accident, a criminal act or an intentional act.” The man was reportedly traveling with his wife at the time of the incident.

Despite the tragedy, the MSC Euribia, a 19-story cruise ship, is continuing its seven-day voyage and is expected to return to Kiel as planned on Saturday, June 8. The cruise ship’s tracking data shows that the ship briefly turned around in the narrow canal shortly after the incident.



Worryingly, according to Cruise Law News, this is the seventh case in less than seven months of a person falling overboard from an MSC cruise ship.

In March, another passenger named Liam Brody Wilkie Jones disappeared from the same MSC Euribia during a seven-day European cruise and is presumed dead. Just a month earlier, a passenger survived after falling from the MSC Bellissima while voyaging from Taiwan to Okinawa.

The MSC Euribia stands an impressive 213 feet tall and can accommodate more than 8,000 passengers. A ticket for the Norway cruise where the man tragically fell overboard on Tuesday costs about $700 per person, according to MSC’s website.