Game of Jenga to unload the shipwrecked Napoli's cargo

The painstaking operation to remove the 2,291 remaining containers on stricken ship MSC Napoli began on Sunday.

Giant crane barges will be used in an operation to gingerly unstack the teetering cargo from the vessel, which is still listing heavily off the Devon coast.

Coastguards have likened the task to a 'game of Jenga'. It is expected to take five months to clear the ship, instead of a few days if it was in port.

The biggest crane will remove containers in a strict priority order. A smaller one will then transfer them to a barge that will take them to Portland Port in batches of up to 90 at a time.

First salvagers must finish pumping 3,500 tons of oil from the 62,000-ton ship's fuel tanks. The Napoli has already lost up to 100 tons of fuel, which created a slick several kilometres long that coated tens of thousands of birds.

Coastguard spokesman Mark Clark said of the containers: "It's like a game of Jenga because you have to remove all the items very, very carefully without everything else falling."

Scavengers were warned to stay clear of Branscombe beach after days of pilfering from the 50 containers that washed ashore from the ship, which was deliberately run aground to stop it sinking in the storm of January 18.

Hundreds of angry residents packed Branscombe village hall to criticise the police response to the looting they say left their community in chaos.

And one woman told how an ambulance was four hours late getting to her collapsed 92-year-old mother - only for it to be jeered and kicked by scavengers as it left for hospital.

Mary Dowell, 70, said the 999 crew were held up reaching her mother Mary Rabjohns because they could not get past cars parked along the beach road. Neighbours later had to form a corridor to get the vehicle through crowds as it left.

Superintendent Emma Webber promised police would protect the village from any future waves of looters.