The aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman collided with a merchant vessel, near the Port of Said, Egypt, around midnight Wednesday local time, in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
The bulk freighter Besiktas-M is flagged to Panama. It had come through the Suez Canal before the accident, according to public ship tracking data.
The collision happened as the carrier sailed toward the Suez Canal on route back to the Red Sea. The ship had made a port call a week earlier at Naval Support Activity Souda Bay in Greece.
The Navy released a photo which shows damage to carrier, just below the flight deck.
The Navy reports no flooding or injuries. Truman's nuclear propulsion plants are unaffected and in a safe and stable condition, said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Timothy Gorman, spokesperson for U.S. Sixth Fleet.
The Navy has not said whether the accident was severe enough to require the carrier to leave the area for repairs.
USS Truman left Norfolk in September. Its strike group has been part of a mission to protect international shipping in the Red Sea, which has been under fire from Houthi Rebels in Yemen. The ship had been in the Red Sea for two months before leaving for Greece.
The accident remains under investigation, Gorman said.
In 2017, separate deadly collisions between commercial vessels and the Navy ships USS McCain and USS Fitzgerald in Singapore and Japan pushed the Navy to overhaul how it operated its surface fleet, imposing new training and manning requirements.
