NANJING - More than 1,200 ships have been stranded on a section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in Jiangsu province due to the heavy fog that has engulfed the region since Friday morning, maritime officials said Friday.

Visibility around the section of the canal in the city of Yangzhou was reduced to less than 50 meters, so all traffic on the Yangzhou section has been halted since Friday morning, said Wang Xuehong, an official with the city's maritime administration.

As of 11 am, over 1,200 ships had been stranded and the traffic control remained in place, Wang said.

The Yangzhou meteorological center on Thursday night issued an orange alert, the second highest alert on the three level scale, forecasting that fog would reduce visibility to less than 200 meters and would persist through the next few days.

The canal, with a total length of 1,794 km, is the oldest and longest canal in the world, with a history of over 2,500 years.