The Cyanide Leak that Ate Europe

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.