Belgrade - Yugoslavia yesterday issued a ban on drinking water from the Danube river after an environmental disaster linked to a leak of cyanide solution from a gold mine in neighbouring Romania killed thousands of fish.
More than 100 tonnes of dead fish have been recovered from rivers in Hungary and Yugoslavia and water-pumping stations on the Danube have been shut down following the spill of 100,000 cubic metres of cyanide-laced water from the gold mine, officials said.
Hungary, which has also suffered from the contaminated water, has branded the disaster eastern Europe's worst since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown. It warned it could take years for the environment to recover.