Video and satellite photos show Iran’s oil spill on Persian Gulf island
A mysterious attack on an Iranian oil refinery during the Iran war caused an oil spill that affected a nearby Persian Gulf Island that’s a protected breeding ground for wildlife, videos and satellite photos show.
The oil-soaked waves lapping onto Shidvar Island, an uninhabited island, represent yet another sign of the ecological damage wrought by the war.
Oily rain has also fallen on the Iranian Capital, Tehran, after airstrikes targeted oil facilities there. Iranian attacks on ships passing through the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman also caused environmental damage. Mobile phone footage shot April 9 by an Iranian named Ehsan Jalali shows thick black smoke rising after the strike on an oil refinery on Lavan, an island just off mainland Iran near Shidvar.
The footage corresponds with known features of both islands and was posted by Jalali to Instagram in the last few days, as Iran’s theocratic Government has shut off access to the wider internet for weeks. Other footage shot by Jalali shows a lifeless bird and crab covered in oil, while a man holds up a dead swordfish.
“Poor birds, look how they are stuck in oil. Look at the herd of dolphins. Poor things come to the surface to breathe, but they swallow oil,” Jalali narrates in the footage. “Look what they did to this island.
Look what they have done. The corpses of fish are coming to the surface one by one.” Photographs taken on April 10 from an Airbus DS Pleiades Neo, a high-resolution optical satellite, and analysed by The Associated Press on Tuesday, show the fire still burning at the refinery two days after the attack.
