Ships freed from Baltic ice nightmare

Icebreakers freed dozens of ships from thick ice in the Baltic Sea, officials said on Friday, ending the ordeal of thousands of passengers stranded in freezing conditions off the Swedish coast.

"There are no more ships stuck in the ice," Ann Ericsson of the Swedish Maritime Administration's ice breaker unit, told reporters. (AP Photo)

A number of vessels, including several passenger ferries shuttling as many as 1,000 passengers each between Sweden, Finland and Estonia, became stuck Thursday just outside the Stockholm archipelago, where freezing winds had pushed thick ice towards the coast. (AP Photo)

Two ice breakers failed to free the Amorella and several other ferries yesterday, forcing them to wait for the larger Ymer ice breaker to sail down from the Bay of Bothnia in the north. (AP Photo)

There it had been working to free as many as 50 cargo ships and commercial vessels, some of which had been stuck for days and in one case since last Saturday, according to the maritime administration. (AP Photo)

Three other ferries that got stuck in the ice were able to break free on Thursday. One of those ships, the Finnfellow, collided lightly with the Amorella when the ice pressed the two ships together, officials said. (AP Photo)

A total of about 50 ships were stuck in ice along Sweden's eastern seaboard, said Johny Lindvall, who manages the maritime administration's ice breaker service.

Heavy ice cover is not uncommon further north, but the ice rarely gets thick enough in the Stockholm archipelago to trap powerful passenger ferries like the Amorella. (NDTV Image)