TOKYO (AP) -- Fires were blazing aboard two freighters in Asian waters Tuesday, outside Tokyo and Hong Kong, while Chinese authorities said they finally plugged an oil tanker leak that left an oil slick on miles of the mainland's coastal waters.
In Japan, a grounded freighter carrying nearly 4,000 vehicles was blazing out of control near Izu-Oshima, an island about 80 miles south of Tokyo.
Billowing smoke and the threat of explosion from the 56,835-ton Hual Europe forced dozens of people on shore nearby to be evacuated.
The ship also spilled 106,000 gallons of oil, and the Japanese Coast Guard said Tuesday evening it was beginning a clean up. The Coast Guard did not say how big the slick was, but media reports estimated it at 1 mile long and 32 feet wide.
The Bahamian-registered ship ran aground off shore during an early October typhoon. The 24 crew members were rescued Oct. 2, and the cause of the fire was not known, said Coast Guard spokesman Kenichi Sasaki.
No injuries were reported.
Island and Coast Guard officials said it was carrying a cargo of about 3,700 passenger cars and construction vehicles. Media reports said the ship was on its way from Yokohama to Jamaica with a cargo worth $82 million.
A spokesman from the ship's insurer, Scandinavian Underwriters Far East Agency, was unavailable for comment Tuesday.
The threat of explosion forced the evacuation of 31 people living atop cliffs overlooking the site, island official Takeshiro Kita said. Izu-Oshima has a population of 9,357.
A Coast Guard detachment of three boats and a helicopter were unable to get close enough to the stranded ship to try fighting the blaze, Sasaki said. By midday, the hulk had rolled onto its side against the rocky cliffs.
Sasaki said the ship shouldn't sink because the waters there are too shallow.
Meanwhile, a fire aboard an abandoned tanker off Hong Kong appeared to be dying down Tuesday and was not threatening to ignite its cargo of 20,000 tons of highly volatile liquefied petroleum gas, a Hong Kong marine official said.
Capt. Ravi Dewan, head of the Hong Kong Maritime Search and Rescue Center, said officials in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen had dispatched 12 vessels to monitor the blaze, which caught fire late Saturday night.
The Gaz Poem tanker, which left Hong Kong for a mainland Chinese port last week, was moored about 30 miles south of Daya Bay, southern China.
In the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin, authorities finally plugged an oil leak aboard a Maltese-registered tanker that left a slick on the Bohai Sea, state media in Beijing said.
The Tasman Sea, bound for Tianjin, was at anchor with about 80,000 tons of oil on board, when it was hit by a Chinese ship early Saturday. The collision left a slick 2.5 miles long and 1.4 miles across.
Despite bad weather and high seas, the ship's damaged third compartment was repaired and the flow of oil brought under control by late Monday, the official Xinhua News Agency and newspapers said.
Seven cleaning ships were applying chemical agents to the oil, the English-language China Daily said. No one was injured.
