Troops arrive to help oil cleanup

MADRID, Spain -- The Spanish military sent reinforcements and an oil platform was on its way to help with cleanup operations from the sunken tanker Prestige as officials spotted new slicks off already blackened coastal areas.

Two navy ships docked in the Atlantic port city of Vigo carrying 750 sailors tasked with cleaning hard-to-reach rocky coves in the Galicia region, the government said.

The army also said 4,500 soldiers and 500 air force members from all over Spain started traveling north on Sunday to join the effort.

The reinforcements will boost the number of military personnel helping to alleviate the ecological catastrophe to more than 8,000.

The aging, single-hulled Prestige was carrying 20.5 million gallons of fuel oil when it broke in two and sank Nov. 19, six days after rupturing in a storm and starting to leak. The government says it spilled up to 4.5 million gallons of oil but ecologists put the total at about 5.3 million gallons.

Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy told reporters Sunday after flying over affected areas that as many as 70 smaller slicks were floating off the coasts of Asturias and Cantabria.

Those northern regions were contaminated when oil from the Prestige cleared Spain's northwest tip and started oozing east toward France, which has approved a plan to set up floating barriers to protect its southwest coast.

More than 100 beaches in those two Spanish regions and in Spain's Basque country have been soiled by globs of oil.

"The size is not very big," Rajoy said of the new slicks, adding that seven anti-pollution vessels were operating in the area.

Environment Minister Jaume Matas, speaking in the Basque capital, said seven slicks were off the coast of that region, some with a radius of 100 yards.

Meanwhile, neighboring Portugal said it has hired a Norwegian oil platform that will arrive in a few days to suction oil from slicks at the site of the ship's sinking -- about 150 miles off the coast.

Portuguese Defense Minister Paulo Portas said his country was acting because the Prestige is "potentially dangerous for the Portuguese, Spanish and French coasts."

French Ecology Minister Roselyne Bachelot said Sunday that oil spilled from the Prestige should not wash up onto France's coast for at least three days.

Bachelot and Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie flew over the rugged French Basque coastline in a helicopter to assess potential damages from the thick, gummy oil spills.

"Today the danger is not imminent, but we can't say (what will happen) in three or four days," she said.

Hundreds of miles of Spain's northwestern coast have been fouled and a ban on fishing and seafood harvesting has forced thousands of fishermen to depend on government handouts due to begin today.

Spanish newspapers reported the government was prompted to send more troops after some 5,000 volunteers traveled to the north to don white jumpsuits and gas masks and spend a three-day weekend scooping tar-like muck from beaches and rocks.

The government has been criticized widely for its handling of the crisis, and dispatching more troops was seen as a way to retake the initiative.