Five-meter high waves smashed a Russian tanker in half yesterday, spilling 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil into the Kerch Strait between Russia and Ukraine, officials said.
Two other cargo ships, each carrying some 2,000 tonnes of sulphur, sank in the area and eight crew members from one of the vessels were reported missing amid worsening weather in waters between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
Some 300km further west, the high winds sank a cargo ship carrying scrap metal with 17 sailors on board off Ukraine's Black Sea coast. Two crew members were rescued and 15 were still missing, officials said.
As wind speeds in the area reached 108km per hour, several other ships were reported stranded in and around Kavkaz, a busy Russian commercial port some 1,200km south of Moscow.
Forecasters said the storm conditions would worsen in the coming hours.
A total of 42 vessels have been evacuated from the port and 17 others have been forced to stay because of the risky weather conditions, Russian news agencies reported, citing a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.
There have been no reports of any deaths or injuries from the storm.
Russian environmental campaigners were quoted as saying that the oil spill and the sinking of the two ships carrying sulphur would cause an "ecological catastrophe" in the area.
"This is a serious environmental accident that will require a large amount of work," Oleg Mitvol, head of the Russian government's environmental monitoring agency Rosprirodnadzor, said on the Vesti-24 news channel. "This problem may take a few years to solve."
Prosecutors have opened a criminal inquiry for pollution, reports said.
The prow and the stern of the oil tanker, called Volgoneft-139, tore apart in the storm and "around 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil were spilled," a transport ministry spokeswoman said.
The 13 crew members who were earlier stranded in the stern of the tanker were not in danger but rescue efforts to limit the oil spill were being hampered by harsh weather conditions.
The spill is relatively small compared to the Prestige disaster off the Spanish coast five years ago, when 64,000 tonnes of fuel oil spilled into the Atlantic Ocean.
In November 2002, the Liberian oil tanker Prestige broke up and sank off Spain, spewing fuel oil and fouling the Atlantic coast of France, Spain and Portugal.
Russia and Ukraine have set up a joint crisis center to deal with yesterday's disaster and aircraft were on standby to fly to the area as soon as the weather allows.
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