Hungary's prime minister has blamed ‘human negligence’ for a spill of toxic red sludge that killed eight people last week, and said the government would take control of the company responsible.
Efforts are continuing to build an emergency dam to prevent a second spill of toxic sludge from a partially collapsed reservoir.
Hungary's secretary for environmental protection Zoltan Illich said the reservoir could collapse at any time.
Hundreds of volunteers, disaster relief teams and engineers have been working since Saturday to erect the new dam.
The containing walls of the reservoir already broke a week ago.
Seven people died and widespread environmental damage has been caused following the spill from a storage facility at an aluminium processing plant a week ago.
An area of 40sq.km was polluted, as well tributaries of the Danube.
Kolontar was the village worst hit by the disaster and its entire population of nearly 1,000 people have been forced to evacuate while the threat of a new spill remains.
According to the latest estimates, 600,000-700,000 cubic metres of toxic sludge spilled from the reservoir last Monday and 2.5m tonnes are still contained inside it.
The authorities have now made provision to evacuate up to 3,000 people from the surrounding areas.
