Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Hassan Diab said yesterday he was following up on an oil spill that may have originated from a ship passing near the Israeli coast and has now reached the southern shores of Lebanon, Reuters reported.

Israeli officials said on Sunday they were trying to find the ship responsible for the spill that drenched much of its Mediterranean shoreline with tar, an environmental blow that will take months or years to clean up.

An oil spill earlier this month is threatening the eastern Mediterranean, but many details on the incident are unknown https://t.co/2NrbmfAUKA

— Al-Monitor (@AlMonitor) February 23, 2021

Lebanon’s Diab has tasked the defense minister, environment minister and the National Council for Scientific Research with the follow-up, a statement from his office said.

The sticky black deposits that showed up on Israeli beaches were visible yesterday on beaches in a nature reserve in Tyre, south Lebanon.

#Israel closes all its Mediterranean beaches until further notice, days after an offshore oil spill deposited an estimated dozens of tons of tar across the coastline in what officials are calling one of the country’s worst ecological disasters.https://t.co/Pgt8pgmcuL pic.twitter.com/K4viHOG6w5

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) February 21, 2021

The United Nations interim forces in Lebanon will be informed to draw up an official report, the statement said.

According to Israeli authorities, a possible source could be an oil spill from a ship passing about 50 kilometers offshore on February 11.

(MEMO, PC, Social Media)