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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, September 16, 2002

Fate of Burning Italian Ship in S. Africa to be Decided

It would be decided on Sunday afternoon whether the burning Italian cargo ship was to be dragged out to sea and sunk, the South African Press Association reported on Sunday.


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It would be decided on Sunday afternoon whether the burning Italian cargo ship was to be dragged out to sea and sunk, the South African Press Association reported on Sunday.

The 31,000-ton ship, Jolly Rubino, is stranded less than 300 meters from shore near the St. Lucia Wetlands and Estuary in KwaZulu-Natal four days ago.

Its cargo of more than 1,000 tons of fuel oil, 225 tons of gas oil and an unspecified quantity of hazardous Class 3 chemicals poses a serious threat to the area -- a United Nations World Heritage site.

But, depending on the structural damage, the 190-meter-long vessel could also be transported to a foreign destination as scrap instead of being sunk, district disaster management spokesman Sipho Magwaza told reporters.

Environmentalists began cleaning up a one-kilometer-long oil slick on Friday after a ruptured tank on the vessel began leaking oil and containers fell overboard.

Hoping to prevent an ecological disaster, conservationists in St. Lucia on Saturday sealed the estuary and the mouth of the Umfolozi River with floating pontoon oil booms.

The vessel, belonging to a Genoa-based shipping firm and registered in Naples, ran aground after a fire broke out Tuesday night in the engine room during a journey from Durban to Mombassa, Kenya.


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