Casualty of war

An oil-covered crab at Tabarja, north of Beirut, is among the wildlife casualties resulting from the enormous spill.

This is so bad. So very bad. I'm giving you some excerpts here from an article entitled "An Environmental Disaster Emerges on Lebanon Coast". Here's part of what it says:

The sand along the public beach in south Beirut is blackened and stained. The sea, normally a rich azure, is a noxious yellowish green. The water reeks of petroleum. All the fish are dead; there is not a single bird in the sky.

These are the scars of the Lebanese oil spill, triggered July 15 when Israeli jets bombed the power station at Jiyeh, 18 miles south of Beirut. Between 10,000 and 15,000 tons of heavy fuel oil spilled into the Mediterranean Sea and began flowing north. After six weeks, the slick has spread an estimated 90 miles north and now could threaten the coastal waters of Syria and Turkey.

And it's getting worse.

Some of the oil has washed up on the Lebanese shoreline or sunk to the seabed in a layer up to 4 inches thick, according to a video shot by Lebanese divers and released by Greenpeace.
...
In the Palm Islands Nature Reserve just off the coast near Tripoli, nesting grounds for sea turtles have been inundated with oil. The turtles had already laid their eggs by the time the Israelis began bombing. When the baby turtles hatch, they will have to crawl through an oil slick to get to the water.

"We've never had an environmental disaster like this in Lebanon," said Tarek Moukkaddem, a volunteer from Tripoli who had come to help clean up the Beirut beaches.
...
The health effects of the spill could be dire. Thousands of families on the Lebanese coast depend on fishing for their primary food supply, but surviving fish may contain hydrocarbons and other carcinogens.

The economic effects of the spill go far beyond the immediate coastline. More than 1.6 million tourists had been expected to visit this year -- bringing in $4.4 billion, said Tourism Minister Joe Sarkis. The economy had been growing between 5 and 6 percent because of the tourism boom. "Unfortunately, the war stopped everything," he said.

Tourism accounts for about 12 percent of Lebanon's economy, and seaside resorts and restaurants accounted for more than half of that. "Without the sea, it would reduce the attraction of Lebanon," Sarkis said. "It might take between one and two years to clean."

Lebanon has about 200 beaches and all have been affected, he said. He said resorts such as Eddé Sands and the Movenpick, both of which declined to comment for this article, have all been affected, and many will remain closed for an unknown period of time.

The Israelis deliberately targeted that power station. It's unconscionable. Simply unconscionable.