Ananova:

Environment workers are battling to save hundreds of seabirds after an oil leak into a river.

Up to 20,000 litres of oil-contaminated water per minute were flooding into the River Arun near Ford, West Sussex, an Environment Agency spokesman said.

He said several seabirds had already been caught in the oil and said hundreds of others were at risk.

The leak, which is believed to have come from a local industrial estate, is upstream of a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest at Littlehampton.

The Environment Agency spokesman said the leak had been declared a major incident and said workers were trying to put a boom across the river to stop the oil travelling downstream.

But the Arun is the second-fastest flowing river in Britain, he warned, and oil has already travelled downstream as far as Littlehampton, more than a mile from the site of the leak.

Birds at the Wetlands Wildlife Sanctuary at Arundel are likely to be atrisk, the spokesman said.