CAIRO: Less than two weeks after a river boat sank and spilled oil into Egypt's Nile River, a second barge has sank near the same spot close to Aswan in southern Egypt, the Egyptian official MENA news agency reported. “We are monitoring what has happened and will ensure that any environmental damage is immediately taken care of,” the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA) told Bikya Masr on Thursday morning. According to the report, the boat sank near Naga Hammadi in the Qena governorate, some 300 miles south of Cairo. The EEAA said there are teams of officials already on the scene looking into what had happened and will gauge the response needed. The spill is threatening the clean water supply to the city. The report said the city's president had ordered the closure of the city's major water station if the oil slick spread. The cause of the incident and volume of the spill remained unclear. On Sept 11, a river barge sank in the same river near Aswan, southern Egypt. The accident caused a leak of some 100 tons of fuel. The Nile River is a major source of water for about 90 percent of Egypt's population. BM
