(AFP) – Nov 12, 2007

PORT KAVKAZ, Russia (AFP) — Hundreds of Russian soldiers battled Tuesday to clean up a 2,000-tonne oil spill in environmentally sensitive waters caused by a fierce Black Sea storm that wrecked five ships.

Officials warned of "an environmental catastrophe" as high winds continued to lash Russia's southern coastline, with local radio reports saying there could be another storm.

Regional governor Alexander Tkachyov said 30,000 birds had died.

On the Tuzla Spit, near where waves smashed an oil tanker in half on Sunday, an AFP reporter saw around 200 emergency workers, soldiers and Cossack volunteers putting sand and seaweed caked with fuel oil into some 20 trucks.

"We're clearing up the shore and the water and we're pumping oil out from a tanker damaged in the storm," Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Russian government's environmental monitoring agency, told AFP by telephone.

"If that 2,000-tonne spill moves further into the Sea of Azov there will be serious environmental consequences. It has a fragile ecosystem," said Mitvol, who arrived in the affected area on Monday.

The Kerch Strait where the spill occurred is a waterway separating the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov and is an important migration route for birds and home to the Black Sea porpoise.

The picturesque area, which is dotted with Cossack villages and lagoons, is renowned for its wine and is popular among Russian tourists for its wildlife, beaches and healing mud baths.

"The fishing's good around here in summer, damn it. And now we've got an environmental catastrophe. Those kinds of ships shouldn't sail around here," said the driver of a truck picking up oil from the beach.

Mitvol said a total of 730 rescue workers had been mobilised to clear up the spill, including 500 soldiers. He also said Russian officials would try and contain the slick with booms.

Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov was due to arrive later Tuesday in Anapa, the nearest city to Port Kavkaz, a commercial hub some 1,200 kilometres (750 miles) south of Moscow that was the place worst affected by the storm.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was also expected to visit the Russian side of the Kerch Strait on Tuesday as Ukrainian authorities helped rescue efforts.

Meanwhile fears were growing over the fate of five sailors still missing in Russian waters and 15 more in Ukrainian waters after Sunday's storm battered the north-eastern corner of the Black Sea.

The bodies of three sailors, still in life jackets, were washed ashore on Monday on the Tuzla Spit, near the disputed maritime border between Russia and ex-Soviet Ukraine.

Thirty-six other crew members were rescued from the shipwrecks on Sunday.

On Monday, thick fuel oil deposits could be seen clogging the beaches around Port Kavkaz. Oil-soaked cormorants struggled in the polluted water as rescue workers shovelled away the oil.

Three Russian ships laden with sulphur sank in or near Port Kavkaz on Sunday. The five-metre high waves also broke apart another oil tanker, the Volgoneft-139, on Sunday, causing the spill.

A second tanker, the Volgoneft-123, suffered two cracks in its hull but officials said the leak had been insignificant. The fuel oil from the second tanker was being pumped out of the ship on Tuesday.

"I've never seen weather like this," said a cafe owner in Port Kavkaz, who declined to be named, as the high winds lashed her cafe and cars queued outside for a passenger ferry to Ukraine.

"There aren't going to be any holiday-makers next year because of this. People around here live mainly off that," she said.

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