Toxic liquid creeps toward an olive grove

In a race against time, officials built dams around the 75,000 hectare park to try to stop the stream of poisonous spill.

Rare plants and wildlife were at risk of being destroyed by the concoction of zinc, lead and cadmium.

Rescue measures work

The Environment Minister Isabel Tocino, who visited the sight within hours of the spill, said engineers had succeeded in blocking off the river.

"Fortunately Do�ana has been saved," she told national radio.

"The contaminated waters will not reach the wetlands because all the systems that were put in place yesterday worked."

But with the latest high tides, it seems that some of the toxic waste has got closer to the marsh-lands of the park. As night fell on Saturday, it was impossible to gauge its impact.

Thousands of hectares of farmland have been poisoned

Authorities say the waste from the minerals plant has already caused significant ecological damage, with 10,000 hectares of farmland along the banks of the river poisoned.

The mayors of seven towns along the river have warned citizens not to drink from ground wells.

Outcry

At the height of the operation the biggest outcry came from environmental groups like Greenpeace, who are concerned about the welfare of Europe's largest natural reserve where hundreds of species of flora and fauna flourish as nowhere else on the continent.

They described the accident as a crime against nature and want the Spanish attorney general to take legal action against the foreign group that owns the mining company.

Environmentalists said that the Spanish authorities may have underestimated the true extent of the damage to the flora and fauna of Do�ona and warned that seepage through the undersoil may yet have a catastrophic effect.

Environmental groups say they had warned before about a disaster waiting to happen, but were ignored.

But the mining company said no signs of instability had been detected in the dam before the breach.

Work was under way to reconstruct the dam to avoid further discharges, it said.