JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has sent investigators to Greece to investigate a ship that allegedly caused an oil spill that covered much of Israel’s coastline with tar, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Saturday.
Israel was looking at a shipwreck that passed about 50 km from the sea on February 11 as the possible source of what environmental groups call a disaster for wildlife.
“We will … use all means until we find the environmental offender responsible for the pollution,” Gila Gamliel, Minister of Environmental Protection, said in a statement.
Israel did not provide details about the ship. A Greek coastguard official who did not want to be named said Athens had not received any official request from Israel to investigate a Greek ship.
Volunteers and thousands of soldiers gathered daily on Israel’s beaches to remove the clumps of sticky black tar, which had also washed up in southern Lebanon.
(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Additional Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas in Athens)