Divers today began inspecting the hull of a tanker carrying 750 tons of fuel and sank yesterday off the southeast coast of Tunisiawhere for the time being no infection has been detected according to the authorities.
However, WWF warned of the danger of “a new environmental catastrophe in the region” of Gabes, a major fishing area of ​​some 400,000 people that has already suffered pollution.
Images released by the Ministries of Environment and Defense show Navy divers preparing to leave, and then fall into the water at the site of the wreck.
“Thanks to the improvement in meteorological conditions, a group of divers accompanied by the captain and the engineer of the boat, who know its configuration, are going to the site to examine the hull,” Gabes court spokesman Mohamed Carai told AFP. launched an investigation into the causes of the wreck.
According to the first official findings, “there has been no leakage so far” of the cargo carried by the ship.
The tanker Xelo, which had departed from the port of Damietta in Egypt and was heading to Malta, sank yesterday, Saturday, in Tunisian waters where it had found shelter on Friday night due to bad weather conditions.
For an unknown reason, the tanker, 58 meters long and 9 meters wide, loaded with 750 tons of gasoline, began to sink. Authorities then removed the seven crew members before the boat sank at sea at dawn.
A video from the Ministry of Environment no longer shows anything but the tip of a mast emerging from the waves. The zone has been placed under military control and is not accessible to the press.
Assuring that they could prevent major pollution, authorities announced the installation of floating dams as well as pumping cargo or towing the ship.
They say they have received proposals for help from foreign countries, without saying which ones. According to local media, Italy has proposed sending a special vessel to manage maritime disasters.
“We believe that the means we have developed will help to reduce the accident” and to avoid a major pollution, said yesterday the Minister of Environment, Leila Sikawi, who went to the site of the wreck today at dawn.
The Ministry of Transport, for its part, stated that it wants to “verify the exact commercial character of the boat and its route in recent weeks”.
According to the Ministry of Transport, the ship had stopped from April 4 to 8 in the Tunisian port of Sfax, a large industrial city north of Gabes, “to change crew, refuel and make minor repairs without loading or unloading. unloading “.
The name of the shipowner (registration number OMI 7618272), built in 1977 and flying the flag of Equatorial Guinea, does not appear on merchant ship tracking sites. According to a spokesman for the Gabes court, it is owned by two people, a Libyan and a Turk.
The WWF recalled that the wreck site was “a fishing zone for 600 fishermen” and that the Gulf of Gabes “houses about 34,000 fishermen who have been suffering from chemical pollution attacks for decades”.
The area has been hit by pollution due to the phosphate conversion industries and an oil pipeline from southern Tunisia.
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