ROSTOV-ON-DON (Russia), Nov 11: Massive waves split a Russian oil tanker in two during a fierce storm, spilling at least 2,000 metric tons of fuel into a strait leading to the Black Sea.

It was the worst environmental disaster in the region in years, and some officials said could take years to clean up.

The 8-metre-high waves also sank two Russian freighters nearby, in the Strait of Kerch, a narrow strait linking the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov to the northeast. The two ships together carried about 6,500 metric tons of sulphur, said Sergei Petrov, a spokesman for the regional branch of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry.

All told, as many as 10 ships sank or ran aground in the Strait of Kerch and in the nearby area of the Black Sea.

’’There hasn’t been such massive emergency in the Strait of Kerch,’’ Petrov told The Associated Press.

Rescuers saved all crew members from one of the freighters but eight sailors from the second vessel were missing. The Russian tanker’s 13 crew members were rescued, emergency authorities said.

The tanker, the Volganeft-139 -- loaded with nearly 4,800 metric tons (1.3 million gallons) of fuel oil -- was stranded several kilometres from shore. Stormy weather was preventing emergency workers from collecting the spilled oil which was sinking to the sea bed, authorities said.

’’There is serious concern that the spill will continue,’’ Oleg Mitvol, the head of the state environmental safety watchdog Rosprorodnadzor, said on Vesti 24 television. He said it would take ‘’several years’’ to clean the spill.

Two barges loaded with fuel oil also ran aground in the area but did not leak, Petrov told the AP.

A Turkish freighter, Ziya Kos, also ran aground, he said.

Vesti 24 also reported the sinking of a Russian freighter carrying metal near the port of Sevastopol on Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Two members of its 16-man crew drowned and one was missing, it said.

Maxim Stepanenko, a regional prosecutor, told Vesti 24 that captains had been warned on Saturday about the stormy conditions.

He said another tanker battered by storm developed a crack in its hull but hasn’t yet leaked any oil.

Mitvol said that, while the sulfur did not present an environmental danger, the two freighters could also leak

fuel oil from their tanks, adding to the pollution.Alexei Zhukovin, an expert with the Emergency Situations Ministry’s branch in southern Russia, also insisted that sulphur wasn’t dangerous to the region’s habitat.—AP