[MADRID] Spain will appeal for damages over the Prestige tanker disaster which choked its northwest coast in oil, the government said on Monday, after a court acquitted all defendants of causing the spill.

The court yesterday acquitted the ship's crew and a top Spanish maritime official and awarded no compensation for the 2002 wreck, one of Europe's worst environmental disasters.

Its only sentence was a nine-month jail term for the ship's captain for resisting attempts to tow the wreck away from shore before it spilled its load, killing tens of thousands of seabirds.