BUDAPEST - A waterborne cloud of cyanide, which has been travelling downstream through Hungary for the past two weeks, was expected to reach the Danube, eastern Europe's main waterway, in northern Serbia yesterday.

The cyanide has wiped out plant and animal life as it travelled down the Tisza river, in one of Europe's worst environmental disasters since Chernobyl.

Tons of fish have been killed and drinking water supplies contaminated on the Tisza, one of the region's main waterways, since the cyanide leaked from a mine in western Romania, near the border city of Oradea on 30 January. Hungarian and Serbian officials say the spillage is causing immense damage to the region's fragile ecosystem that could take years to repair.

Eighty per cent of the fish in the Tisza have died since the cyanide reached Serbia, said Attila Juhas, mayor of the northern Serbian town of Senta. "Enormous quantities of dead fish are floating on the surface and the spill continues to spread," he said.

Restaurants in northern Serbia have already removed fish from their menus, and the alarm has spread as far as the capital, Belgrade, which lies on the Danube some 80 miles to the south.

Branislav Blazic, Serbia's Environment Minister, said Serbia will demand compensation from those responsible for the cyanide spill

"We will demand an estimation of the damage and we will demand that the culprits for this tragedy be punished," said Mr Blazic as he toured the area along the Tisza river. "Had we from Yugoslavia done something like this, we probably would have been bombed.

"It is astonishing that somebody let something like this happen. The Tisza has been killed. Not even bacteria have survived." Mr Blazic claimed the initial concentration of the cyanide in Romania must have been enormous if the effects are still so deadly in Yugoslavia.

The cyanide cloud is travelling at 2.5mph and was expected to reach the Danube in northern Serbia yesterday. Sections of the Danube are already heavily polluted after the Nato bombing campaign last year that focused on oil and petrol refineries.

From there the poison is likely to travel downriver through Serbia, and may reach Bulgaria, where the Danube empties into the Black Sea.

Officials of several towns in northern Serbia on the Tisza say their stretches of the river are now completely dead. "The Tisza will practically become a dead river in 10 to 15 hours in the municipality of Kanjiza," said the mayor, Istvan Baskonyi, at the weekend.

Emergency teams have been removing tons of dead fish by hand from the river while signs have been posted by the riverbank in northern Serbia, warning locals to stay away from the Tisza, and not to fish or swim in its waters.

More than 100,000 cubic metres of contaminated water was released. A cyanide solution is used in mining to separategold ore from surrounding rock.

Romanian officials were initially quoted as telling Hungarian experts that the cyanide concentration at the accident site was 7,800mg per litre, compared wilth the admissible level of 0.1mg per litre.

"The cyanide pollution of the Tisza river has led to the greatest extermination of fish life in Central Europe to date," Karoly Pinter, the head of the wildlife department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Regional Development, told the Hungarian state-run news agency MTI.

Ecologists have pointed out that some of the fish are on the endangered list and have probably been totally wiped out. It will take three or more months to assess the full extent of the damage as much of the upper Tisza is covered by ice.

Cyanide use is forbidden in the European Union, but Romania is not a member.

Meanwhile, the Romanian Environment Ministry confirmed reports that the Romanian-Australian company running the mine was closed soon after the cyanide spill. The ministry has sued the company, Carla Chivu, a spokeswoman, said.

Its manager, Philip J Evers, an Australian engineer, told the Hungarian daily Nepszava that the mine's reservoir holding highly poisonous chemical waste from the mine overflowed after what he called unprecedented rain and snowfalls in recent weeks.

Hungary is seeking compensation from Romania, although there are no bilateral agreements on such issues between the two neighbours.

State-run Hungarian radio reported officials confirming that a second cyanide spill occurred on 6 February, but its level of concentration was much lower, 60 times the acceptable level. The mine, which is a joint venture owned by Romanians and Australians, was fined three million leu (just over £100) for waiting 24 hours before reporting the leak.

Copyright Independent.Co.UK

###