Cypriot Agriculture Minister Costas Kadis said on Tuesday that his country is monitoring a huge oil spill from a power plant on Syria’s Mediterranean coast and called for help from the EU. Minister Kadis said that Israel and Greece have been informed and are on standby to help out if necessary, in keeping with the trilateral agreement they signed with Cyprus.
Last week, a massive oil spill from a power plant started spreading along the Mediterranean coast. According to SANA, the spill inside the Baniyas power plant was attributed to an accident. The Syrian government said maintenance teams at the Baniyas Thermal Station had brought the spill from one of the containers under control last Tuesday. However, images from the European Maritime Safety Agency show the existence of a moving, giant oil spill, 22 miles long, between Cyprus and Syria.
the Turkish vice president Fuat Oktay told Anadolu on Monday that Turkey is taking serious measures to prevent the oil slick from Syria from spreading to the Karpas coast of Northern Cyprus—in the independent Turkish part of the Island, and vowed to “block the spill from turning into an environmental disaster.”
Air and sea units of the Turkish Coast Guard Command plan to carry out flights to determine the current position of the slick in the sea.
The most recent computer model indicates the oil spill could affect Cape Apostolos Andreas, the north-easternmost point of Cyprus, late Tuesday.
More images on site showing clean-up around Baniyas shores in western after a massive fuel storage leak at the thermal power plant caused major marine pollution over the last two days. pic.twitter.com/QdfEttplZ9
— Wim Zwijnenburg (@wammezz)