Lebanon might take years to fully recover from the environmental catastrophe caused by the conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite group Hezbollah, Lebanese Environment Minister Yacoub Sarraf said on Tuesday.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, Sarraf said that "it's absolutely an environmental catastrophe in Lebanon's history that will take years and millions US dollars to recover."

Israeli warplane bombed three major fuel storage tanks in a power plant in Jiyeh, south of the Lebanese capital Beirut, on July 13 and 15 respectively, causing the leak of 10,000 to 15,000 tons heavy fuel oil into the Mediterranean Sea.

"Only the cleaning work, including dredging the floating oil from the sea and shovel the black soiled sand from the beach, will take us at least one year," the minister told Xinhua.
 
He said that the fishermen could not go to the sea for fishing during the cleaning, which gave a heavy blow to Lebanon's fishing industry.

"Even after the completion of the cleaning work, we'll have to monitor and inspect the sea food closely before it enter the market because it may be toxic," Sarraf said.

"The government would ask the Israeli government to compensate the fishermen," the minister said, adding that "before Israel's compensation, the government would give them an urgent one."

He said that the pollution also threatened some rare marine species in Lebanese waters, giving an example of turtles which due to hatch in summer season in Lebanese shore.

"We've sent people to the shore to wait for the hatch and carry the baby turtles to boats and bring them into the sea directly, so that the baby turtles would not touch the toxic oil on the beach," said Sarraf.

Apart from the marine life, the pollution also struck Lebanese tourism heavily, which lost at least one million tourists this year.

"The once crowded white beach has become an empty black one now. We can't expect all of the tourists will return in three years," the minister said.

Different from the crude oil, the heavy fuel oil spilled into the sea is a processed oil with more chemical contents and toxic substances, so it is harmful to human's health, according to the minister.

"The oil pollution will cause a long-term impact on local people's health, raising the risk of cancers, immunity problems, rash in skin and so on," said Sarraf.

However, the oil leak was not the only pollution in Lebanon, as the intense bombardment in south Lebanon caused environment problems alike.

"Even the regular bombs also have chemical contents, which do harm to the health of people, say nothing of the uranium bombs," the minister said, adding that "we have no evidence yet that the Israeli army used uranium weapons in this conflict, but we will send people to south to investigate and assess the impact."

He pointed out that the intense bombardment in south Lebanon certainly raised dust into the air and caused air pollution which would do harm to people's respiratory system.

The Israel-Hezbollah fighting erupted on July 12 after two Israeli soldiers were captured and eight others killed by the Lebanese Shiite group in cross-border attacks.

The conflict came to a cease-fire on Aug. 14 thanks to the UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

(Xinhua News Agency August 30, 2006)