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Tunisia: sunken oil tanker is empty, disaster averted

2022-04-22T13:32:57.906Z


Tunisian authorities announced that the shipwrecked oil tanker off Gabes last Saturday was empty, excluding any risk of pollution, after initially indicating that the ship was carrying 750 tons of diesel. (HANDLE)


(ANSA) - GABES, APRIL 22 - The Tunisian authorities announced that the oil tanker that wrecked last Saturday near Gabes was empty, excluding any risk of pollution, after initially indicating that the ship was carrying 750 tons of diesel.

But if an environmental disaster has been averted, gray areas remain on the oil tanker's track and the nature of its operations.


    "The Xelo ship that sank in the Gulf of Gabes does not contain diesel and its tanks are empty," the Minister of the Environment specified in a statement.

"It does not pose an immediate pollution risk," he added.

The captain of the Marinatunisina Mezri Letayef, head of a crisis unit in the port of Gabès, specified that this discovery was made "following the operations of Tunisian and Italian divers", after the arrival on the site of an anti-pollution ship sent by the Navy Italian.

"The four tanks are filled with sea water," Letayef said, explaining that "it could be that lanave is not actually involved in transporting fuels."


   According to the ministry statement, the preparations started to pump the diesel will "cease" and the authorities will study a possible rescue and towing of the wreck "in a subsequent phase".


    The Xelo, en route to Malta according to the Tunisian authorities, sank on April 16 in Tunisian waters where she had sheltered the day before due to bad weather conditions.

According to Tunisi, she had departed from the Egyptian port of Damietta, a circumstance that the Egyptian port authorities have denied.

For reasons still unknown, this tanker 58 meters long and 9 wide, built in 1977, has begun to take on water.

The Marinatunisina evacuated the seven crew members before the lanave sank nearly 20 meters deep.

(HANDLE).


Source: ansa

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