'Damage is done' to Lebanon coast

By Mark Kinver
Science and nature reporter, BBC News

Lebanon's coastline could take up to 10 years to recover from a massive oil spill, the nation's environment minister has said.

Yacoub Sarraf said it was impossible to tackle the problem while the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel continued.

Marine experts have warned the spill could pose a cancer risk to people living in the affected areas.

The oil slick caused by Israeli bombing of a power station now covers 120km (75 miles) of the region's coasts.

Mr Sarraf said the delay had already severely affected the Lebanese shores.

"The damage has been done. It goes without saying that the whole fishing community will be hit for at least two or three years before the ecosystem re-establishes itself," he told BBC News.

"We cannot get equipment, companies, labour or know-how to handle the problem," he said.

"If you compare this to any spill in history, intervention can help within the first 48-72 hours of the spill; we are already 20 days too late."

'Cancer risk'

Marine experts from Inforac, an organisation with links to the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), issued a warning on Tuesday that the raid on the Jiyyeh Power plant in mid-July could pose a cancer risk to people living in the area.

Spokeswoman Simonetta Lombardo said the spill of fuel oil was a "high-risk toxic cocktail mahttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifde up of substances which cause cancer and damage to the endocrine system".

The experts warned that the first people at risk from the "toxic spray" were the two million inhabitants of Beirut.

They also said that large quantities of dead fish along Lebanon's shores had been killed by the oil pollution.

The Lebanese environment minister said the latest satellite images showed the oil slick was continuing to spread across the eastern Mediterranean Sea, threatening the coastlines of Turkey and possibly Cyprus.

However, a spokesman for Turkey's prime minister said the risk to the country's shores was "fairly limited", but aircraft were carrying out regular monitoring flights and that naval vessels were ready to deploy floating barriers if needed.

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