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  • 2021-09-07 (xsd:date)
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  • he said. But that is false. Neighboring countries and global environmental groups are crying foul. While Syria claimed most of the spill was on its own shoreline, satellite photos showed it had spread afar.Images from Orbital EOS, a Spanish Maritime Safety & Rescue Agency software platform, captured a huge floating pond of fuel heading into open seas, toward Cyprus. The Syrian Directorate of Ports said cleaning efforts were being made by hand because advanced clean-up equipment and maintenance parts were unattainable as a result of the sanctions imposed on Syria. The U.S. government designated Syria a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979. Since the uprising in Syria in 2011 and subsequent civil war, the U.S. has tightened economic sanctions on Syria to punish the regime’s aggression against civilians. The Mediterranean Marine Initiative, an effort by the nonprofit World Wide Fund for Nature, issued a statement on September 1 expressing concern about the spill and its long-term impact. An 800 km2 oil spill is threatening the coastline of Cyprus and Turkey (en)
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  • A large oil spill off Syria’s western shores has been spreading eastward across the Mediterranean Sea, edging close to Cyprus. The spill began on August 23, when a dilapidated oil container belonging to a power plant in the coastal city of Baniyas leaked though a crack in its walls. The Syrian government immediately downplayed the problem, claiming everything was under control and a clean-up nearly complete. The country’s electricity minister, Ghassan el-Zamel, told the Alwatan newspaper that the spill was under investigation and that a national disaster had been averted by a rapid response from power plant crews. What happened cannot be described as pollution (en)
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