Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
26-07-2023
ALGIERS: More than 30 people have been killed in wildfires that are raging across Algeria.
Those killed include 10 soldiers who were trying to get the flames under control in the face of high winds and scorching summer temperatures, government ministries said on Monday.
At least 1,500 people were evacuated.
Wildfires, some spread by strong winds, moved across forests and agricultural areas in 16 regions causing 97 blazes in the North African country.
The largest and deadliest fires ravaged parts of Bejaia and Jijel in the Kabyle region east of Algiers and Bouira, about 100km (60 miles) southeast of the capital Algiers, the interior ministry said.
Operations to tamp down the fires included some 7,500 firefighters and 350 trucks on the ground as well as air support.
Algeria is no stranger to summer wildfires.
At least 37 people were killed last August after wildfires blazed near its northern border with Tunisia.
A year earlier, authorities said dozens were killed in blazes including soldiers called in to help fight the fires in the mountainous Kabyle region that is dotted with villages.
Strong winds and successive heat waves have fueled vicious fires in Greece and elsewhere around the Mediterranean this summer.
In some other North African countries such as Morocco and Libya, temperatures were relatively normal compared with annual averages. However, in Tunisia, it neared 50C on Monday and the state-owned energy company STEG announced planned power cuts of between 30 minutes and an hour in an effort to preserve the electricity network’s performance.
In August last year, huge fires killed 37 people in Algeria’s north-east El Tarf province. The previous summer, 90 people were killed in such fires.
In an attempt to avoid a repeat of previous years’ death tolls, the authorities announced a series of measures in the months leading up to peak summer heat. These included the acquisition of six medium-sized water-bombing aircraft and the construction of landing strips for helicopters and fire-fighting drones. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
