"I can guarantee that the ice and snow we have used for the festival is safe and clean," Du Yuxin, the Communist Party's secretary in Harbin, said in comments published in the China Daily.

Du said ice for the sculptures had been extracted from a tributary of the Songhua River that had not been affected by the toxic spill, which forced the city's water supplies to be cut for five days in November.

"I believe there is nothing to worry about and no need for visitors from both home and abroad to eliminate Harbin from their touring schedule," he said.

The ice festival, which opened Thursday, is one of the few tourism drawcards for Harbin, an otherwise bleak industrial city of nine million people where temperatures drop below 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit) during winter.

Tens of thousands of visitors from around the country and the world travel to Harbin for the month-long event, which is famous for its dazzling array of ice sculptures.

World historical monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall and Egyptian pyramids are replicated in ice at the festival. With China celebrating the "Year of Russia" in 2006, Russian landmarks are also being featured.

Harbin was the biggest city to be affected by the slick of toxic benzene and nitrobenzene that was released into the Songhua river following a blast on November 13 at a PetroChina chemical factory.

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