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Environmental campaigners warned of impending disaster Wednesday as a massive oil slick flowed down Italy's Po River after saboteurs struck at a disused refinery.
Oil moved downstream along the Lambro river, passing three barriers placed to block and absorb the slick, and flowed into the Po near the northern city of Piacenza, officials said.
Prosecutors in the town of Monza, near Milan, have begun an investigation into the spill, while the president of Monza province, Dario Allevi, called the incident "a true act of environmental terrorism".
Monia Maccarini, a spokeswoman for the Lombardy region's environmental protection agency (ARPA), said the spill involved at least 1,000 cubic metres (one million litres, 260,000 gallons) of oil, and probably much more.
"We are going ask that a state of disaster be called and a plan put in place to limit the damage caused by this serious situation which puts at risk our entire territory and our waterways," said Davide Boni, who heads environment programmes for the Lombardy regional government.
Teams were desperately trying to stem the flow by erecting barriers but campaigners feared that their efforts would not be enough to avert an environmental catastrophe.
"We are facing a true environmental disaster. The problem does not concern only the Lambro river, but all of the Po throughout its length, until the delta" said Legambiente, Italy's largest environmental organisation.
The Lombardy prefect has "told mayors to ask the population to avoid using tap water", the head of his cabinet, Roberta De Francesco, told AFP.
Aside from the barriers, teams of fire fighters and environmental technicians have been deployed with equipment to mop up the oil.
The spill has already killed dozens of birds and animals and a state of alert has been declared on some stretches of the river, one of the longest in Europe.
Stretching over a distance of some 650 kilometres (400 miles), the Po flows eastward across northern Italy, irrigating the country's largest and most fertile plain, before it reaches the Adriatic Sea.
On the banks of the river near the small town of Calendasco, northeast of Piacenza, a small army of firefighters, environmental protection workers and civil protection volunteers battled to stem the tide of oil, as the first sparse traces flowed past them.
"We are trying to put up a barrier across the river and place material that will absorb the hydrocarbons," Enzo Buttasava, a civil protection volunteer, told AFP.
"Here there is a lot of current, the spill is diluted but the oil could accumulate further downstream" said Alfio Rabeschi, a municipal representative.
"It's a great catastrophe," he added.
The spill was triggered in the early hours of Tuesday after saboteurs broke into the depot of the former Lombardi Petroli refinery in Villasanta and opened the valves, according to the ANSA news agency.
The spill, several kilometres long, moved downstream with the Lambro river from Villasanta, crossed the town of Monza, passed by the Milan area and then flowed into the Po.
