The construction over the top of Xiamen-Kinmen Bridge's main tower in Xiamen section was completed on Monday.
It marks that the project has now officially entered the critical phase of suspension cable erection, laying a solid foundation for subsequent procedures such as installing main cables and hoisting steel box girders.
The navigation bridge, whose main tower was topped out, has a total length of 1,948 meters, with a span of 928 meters and a height of 178.1 meters. Each main tower, from bottom to top, is composed of 60 steel shell segments and two steel crossbeams.
The project team has overcome a series of major technical challenges, including offshore construction of ultra-high structures, high-precision assembly of steel shell segments, and temperature control in large-volume concrete works.
The offshore primary line of the Xiamen-Kinmen Bridge Xiamen section is expected to open to traffic by the end of 2026.
Main tower of Xiamen–Kinmen Bridge Xiamen section topped out
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside Bulgaria's Ministry of Defense on Friday night to protest U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and demand that U.S. military aircraft leave Bulgaria.
The protesters carried banners reading "Bulgaria says no to war! We want peace, not death!" and "Yankee, go home!" to voice opposition to what they described as an illegal invasion and to the presence of U.S. military forces in Bulgaria.
"We have gathered here to express our opinion that what the United States has launched is an illegal invasion," said Grigorova, a protester.
Several U.S. military planes have been deployed at Sofia Airport since February. Although the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense has denied that they were linked to U.S. military operations against Iran, saying they were deployed to provide logistical support for NATO operations, some Bulgarians remain concerned that this could drag their country into war.
The U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28 launched strikes against Iran, plunging the war-torn Middle East into a new round of violence. Iran has retaliated with a series of counterattacks against Israel and U.S. targets across the region.
Bulgarians rally against U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran
