osimiri Kuwaiti: al-Khiran - ebe ntụrụndụ ị ga-anọpụ

Tourists and residents in Kuwait should stay away from the resort area called al-Khiran in Kuwait.

Kuwait battled Sunday to control an oil spill off its southern coast that stained its beaches, threatened to damage power plants and water stations, and left long black slicks in the Persian Gulf.

Boats and crews have been putting booms into the water to try and contain the spill. Officials want to protect waterways, power plants and water facilities first, then clean surrounding beaches, according to a report on the state-run KUNA news agency.

Khaled al-Hajeri, the president of Kuwait’s Green Line Society, said the environmental non-profit organization holds the government responsible for any damage or health effects of the spill.

“There will be severe consequences to those responsible for this incident, and we will prosecute them,” Sheikh Abdullah al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family.

Authorities in neighboring Saudi Arabia have put an emergency action plan into effect to deal with the spill and were conducting an aerial survey of the area, according to a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

The joint operations center in the Saudi border town of Khafji said facilities there have not been affected by the spill.

Kuwait said American oil firm Chevron Corp. and containment specialists Oil Spill Response Limited were helping in the cleanup. Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, operates fields on both sides of the border.

The area in Kuwait is home to the oil and natural gas fields shared by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Some of those fields famously were set ablaze by Iraqi forces retreating from a U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War that ended Saddam Hussein’s occupation of the country.