Mass death of fish in a German-Polish river after a suspected chemical waste dump

Millions of fish have turned up dead in the Oder River that runs through Germany and Poland, prompting warnings of an environmental disaster as residents are urged to stay away from the water.

Fish floating on German banks near the eastern town of Schwedt are believed to have washed upriver from Poland, where locals and fishermen reported the first reports of mass fish kills on July 28.

Germany blames Poland.

German officials accused Polish authorities of failing to inform them of the deaths and were shocked when the wave of lifeless fish floated into view.

In Poland, the government has also been heavily criticized for not taking swift action.

Nearly two weeks after the first dead fish appeared floating in Polish villages, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Friday that "at first everyone had thought it was a local problem."

But he admitted that the "scale of the disaster is very large, large enough to say that the Oder will need years to recover its natural state."

"Huge amounts of chemical waste were probably dumped into the river with full knowledge of the risk and consequences," the Polish leader added, while Germany's Environment Minister Steffi Lemke urged a thorough investigation into what she called a "disaster." environmental” in the making.

The catastrophe also affects thousands of mammals

Thousands of beavers, dogs, rats and rodents have been found dead on the banks of the Oder River. The ecological catastrophe affects every living being that comes into contact with the poisoned water.

The government of Germany as well as Poland has not specified how many humans have been affected by the catastrophe. Could be thousands. The only thing that has been done so far is to warn the population not to have any contact with the waters of the Oder River.

The strange and until now inexplicable phenomenon affects hundreds of kilometers of the Oder river bed and to date no explanation has been found, much less a solution.