Wildfires that have killed at least 38 people this week and left a trail of destruction in northeastern Algeria have now been contained, a civil defense official told AFP on Friday.
“All the fires have been brought under complete control,” said Fire Brigade Colonel Farouk Achour from Civil Protection.
Since early August, nearly 150 fires have burned hundreds of hectares of forest in Africa’s largest country.
Algeria’s forests have become the scene of hard-to-control annual summer fires as climate change exacerbates a protracted drought.
The Justice Department launched an investigation after Home Secretary Kamel Beldjoud suggested some of this year’s fires were deliberate and authorities announced four arrests of suspected arsonists on Thursday.
Officials have been accused of being ill-prepared as few firefighting planes were available, despite record losses from last year’s fires and a windfall from gas exports amid rising global energy prices.
Authorities said they deployed more than 1,700 firefighters Wednesday and Thursday to battle the widespread blaze.
The dead included more than 10 children and a similar number of firefighters, according to multiple sources including local journalists and the fire service.
Most were in the El Tarf region near Algeria’s eastern border with Tunisia, an area that was hot at 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit) earlier this week.
Among the victims were five members of the same family who died in flames near the mountainous area of Souk Ahras.
– strong winds –
A witness, who asked not to be named, said 12 people were burned on their bus trying to flee as fire raged through an animal park.
Takeddine, a park worker who declined to give his full name, said staff helped families with young children escape when flames engulfed the park.
“No one came to our aid, neither the fire brigade nor anyone else,” he told the AFP news agency.
Fires last year killed at least 90 people and burned 100,000 hectares of forest and farmland in the north of the country.
Experts have called for major efforts to boost firefighting capacity in Algeria, which has more than four million hectares of forest.
Algeria had agreed to buy seven firefighting aircraft from Spanish company Plysa, but canceled the contract after a diplomatic row over Western Sahara in late June, according to specialist website Mena Defense.
Spain is also struggling with hundreds of forest fires this year after severe heat waves and long periods of drought.
On Thursday, Algeria’s Prime Minister Aimene Benabderrahmane defended the government’s response, saying his country had ordered four new firefighting planes but they would not be available until December.
He added that strong winds had made the blazes worse and said authorities were “using all their means” to put them out.
#Deadly #forest #fires #contained #Algeria
