A state of high alert has been issued in India’s southern state of Kerala after a container ship carrying hazardous cargo sank in the Arabian Sea.
The Liberia-flagged MSC ELSA 3 was sailing between the Indian ports of Vizhinjam and Kochi when it sank about 38 nautical miles (70 kilometres) off Kerala early on Sunday morning due to flooding in one of its compartments.
All 24 crew members were rescued, India's defence ministry said.
The vessel went down with 640 containers, including 13 with an unspecified "hazardous cargo" and 12 containing calcium carbide.
"As the oil slick can reach anywhere along the Kerala coast, an alert has been sounded across the coastal belt," the chief minister's office said in a statement.
It also had 84.44 metric tonnes of diesel and 367.1 metric tonnes of furnace oil in its tanks.
Authorities fear that some of the harmful substances the ship was carrying may have leaked into the sea, posing a risk to local residents and marine life.
The Kerala chief minister’s office on Monday urged people to stay away from some of the containers that began washing ashore.
It also advised fishermen not to venture too close to the sunken ship.
The Indian Coast Guard said it had sent an aircraft with an oil spill detection system to survey the area.
It also deployed a ship carrying pollution control equipment to the site of the accident.
