By RIA Novosti
Moscow : Russia has started delivering special chemicals to clean up the environmental aftermath of Sunday’s tragedy between the Black and Azov Seas, an emergency ministry official said Wednesday.
The Nov 11 storm in the Kerch Strait killed at least six sailors, sank four ships and split an oil tanker into two. The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said 2,000 metric tonnes of fuel oil had spilled into the sea.
“Work has begun to deliver special absorbent to Port Kavkaz to clean up the aftermath of the fuel oil spill in the Kerch Strait,” Viktor Beltsov, deputy head of the ministry’s information department said over the phone.
Beltsov also said about 870 metric tonnes of oil-contaminated waste had been collected in the area of Port Kavkaz by Wednesday.
The Russian fisheries committee earlier said some 9,000 fish have been killed by the pollution in the strait. A representative of the Krasnodar Territory administration said mass death of birds have been reported on the coastline in the area.
“According to latest reports, 30,000 birds died on the coast, and as many have been stained with fuel oil, so they are also likely to die,” he said.
The ministry’s southern department said that 10 metric tonnes of absorbent chemicals had been delivered Wednesday morning to the Kerch Strait coast to clean seawater of the spill.
Rescuers have resumed the search for five missing sailors from the sunken dry freighter Nakhichevan, the department said.
Emergency services earlier said they had found the bodies of three sailors from the Nakhichevan, while another three had been rescued by Ukrainian rescuers.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said a Russian-Ukrainian working group set up to deal with the Kerch Strait disaster will start work Nov 15.