A tanker carrying 750 tonnes of diesel fuel from Egypt to Malta collapsed off Tunisia’s southeast coast on Saturday, but officials say a significant spill is unlikely.
According to authorities, the crew of the Xelo vessel issued a distress call on Friday evening and sought shelter in Tunisian seas from strong weather before sinking in the Gulf of Gabes the next morning.
The issue is “in control,” according to Environment Minister Leila Chikhaoui, who travelled to the port of Gabes on Saturday to assist with the response.
“We think the hull is still watertight and there is no leakage for the moment,” she told AFP.
“We think that the means we already have at our disposal will allow us to limit the accident,” she said, adding that the government would not hesitate to appeal for foreign assistance if necessary.
The district court in Gabes said it had opened an investigation into the accident.
Court spokesman Mohamed Karray said the tanker had issued a distress call before it “sunk this morning in Tunisian territorial waters”.
The Equatorial Guinea-flagged Xelo was headed from the Egyptian port of Damietta to Malta when it requested entry to Tunisian waters.
The tanker is 58 metres (63 yards) long and nine metres wide, according to ship monitoring website vesseltracker.com.
It began taking water around seven kilometres (over four miles) offshore in the Gulf of Gabes and the engine room was engulfed, according to the Tunisian environment ministry.
It said Tunisian authorities evacuated the seven-member crew.
– Polluted waters –
The environment minister said authorities were waiting for the “weather to improve in terms of both the wind and the swell before sending down divers to check with more certainty on the state of the hull”.
The weather was still too poor to start Saturday, Chikhaoui added.
As a precaution, protective booms to contain any oil slick have been placed in the water around the wreck under the supervision of the military.
Court spokesman Karray said the Georgian captain, four Turks and two Azerbaijanis were briefly hospitalised for checks and were now in a hotel.
The defence, interior, transport and customs ministries were working to avoid “a marine environmental disaster in the region and limit its impact”, the environment ministry said.
Before the ship sank, the ministry had described the situation as “alarming” but “under control”.
Activists claim that pollution from adjacent phosphate processing businesses, as well as the existence of a pipeline delivering oil from southern Tunisia, has harmed the Gulf of Gabes, which was traditionally a fishing area.
The country’s most recent maritime incident occurred in October 2018, when the Tunisian freighter Ulysse collided with the Cyprus-based Virginia, which was anchored about 30 kilometres (20 miles) off the northern tip of the French island of Corsica, spilling hundreds of tonnes of fuel into the Mediterranean.
Disentangling the boats and pumping 520 cubic metres of engine fuel that had escaped tanks took several days of nautical manoeuvring.
