Stricken tanker splits and sinks

A TIME bomb of almost 20 million gallons of thick oil was ticking on the bed of the Atlantic last night, threatening to swamp Spanish and Portuguese coasts with one of the world's worst ecological disasters.

The oil went down 11,800 feet inside the bowels of the crippled tanker Prestige which finally split in half yesterday and sank 150 miles off Spain's north-west Coast of Death.

A 22-mile long slick of oil with the consistency of chewing gum seeped out of the tanker before it sank and European environmental agencies prepared for a major battle to stop it hitting Spanish and Portuguese shores to add more misery to an already polluted coastline.