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Tuesday, 19 November, 2002, 18:08 GMT

Oil has been washing up on beaches in Galicia

A stricken tanker which has been leaking oil off the north-west coast of Spain has sunk after breaking apart, taking thousands of tons of fuel with it.

'Prestige'

Built: 1976

Weight: 42,000 tons

Cargo: 77,000 tons of oil

Owners: Mare Shipping

Registered: Bahamas

Vulnerable vessel

The bow of the Prestige was the first to go under water, followed a few hours later by the rear of the vessel, which had been carrying at least 70,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil.

There are fears of a massive ecological disaster if all the oil escapes from the Bahamas-registered tanker, which was about 250 kilometres (150 miles) from the Spanish coast when it started to break up.

A spokesman for the Dutch salvage company Smit Salvage said at least some of the compartments containing oil would go to the sea bed intact, lessening the impact of the spill, but that it was impossible to say how many.

"And the low temperature of the sea will hopefully slow down the speed at which the oil escapes from those compartments which have split," Daniel Yates told BBC News Online.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2002