NEW YORK (Reuters)

A Mexican Navy sailing ship festooned with lights and a giant flag crashed into the landmark Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday night (May 17), shearing the top of its masts, killing two people and injuring 17 others, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said.

Videos online showed the training vessel Cuauhtémoc as it approached the iconic bridge over the East River, close to the Manhattan side of the span, which connects the borough with Brooklyn.

Its 147-foot (45-m) masts were too tall to clear the arched bridge at that point and toppled when the vessel, named after the last Aztec emperor, sailed underneath.

The Mexican Navy said on social media late on Saturday that 22 people were injured on board the ship, of which 19 were receiving medical attention in local hospitals, and of those, three were seriously injured.

No rescue operations were needed because none fell into the water, it added.

Early on Sunday, Adams said on X that two of the 277 people on board at the time had died and two others remained in critical condition.

Naval cadets dressed in white uniforms could be seen dangling from the ship’s crossbeams after the crash.

“No one fell into the water; they were all hurt inside the ship,” a police official said.

The official said mechanical issues had probably caused the crash, without providing further details.

At one of the suspension bridge’s bases, located near New York City’s South Street Seaport, online video showed bystanders running in terror as the massive vessel hit the bridge and veered toward the dock.

The bridge, a popular tourist attraction and a main conduit between Manhattan and Brooklyn, was completed in 1883. It was once the largest suspension bridge in the world.

The bridge sustained no major damage, New York City transportation official said. Traffic reopened in both directions after a preliminary inspection.

Earlier, Mexico’s foreign ministry said on social media that Ambassador Esteban Barragán and other officials were assisting affected cadets and had been in contact with local authorities.

The training ship Cuauhtémoc was built at the Celaya Shipyards in Bilbao, Spain, in 1981, according to the South Street Seaport Museum, which said on its website that it was co-hosting the vessel’s visit to New York that was scheduled to conclude on Saturday evening. The public was invited to come aboard the ship during its visit.

The ship was disembarking from New York and heading to Iceland, the New York police official said.