Firefighters in Algeria have extinguished all but one of more than 50 wildfires that ravaged the country this week, leaving at least 37 people dead and consuming farms, crops and cork forests, authorities said on Friday.
Visibly anguished, farmer Ali Gharsi walked past dead animals through a fire-devastated area in the El Tarf region near Algeria’s Mediterranean Sea coast and the Tunisian border.
“My livestock is lost as is the food for it,” he said. “I lost everything, really I have nothing left.”
Photo: AFP
Four people have been arrested on suspicion of setting fire to crops in El Tarf, the epicenter of the wildfires, the Algeria Press Service reported.
Algerian Prime Minister Aimene Benabderrahmane, visiting the scene on Thursday, said the larger problem was the exceptional heat and winds fanning the flames across the North African region. Similar fires and extreme weather linked to climate change have hit countries around Europe this month.
“Today, around 4am, we managed to put an end to all the outbreaks of fires across the country,” except for one in Skikda that is contained but not fully out, Farouk Achour, communications director at Algeria’s civil protection service, said on national radio on Friday. He listed more than 50 scattered fires.
In El Tarf, residents still in shock took stock of the damage.
“People died and nobody came,” said Hakim Bouachiha, a security worker at the Berabtia Zoo, describing a three-hour wait for emergency crews.
The death toll included a family of five found in their home, tourists visiting the coast and eight people on a public bus who were surprised by flames in a mountainous region.
El Tarf resident Mohamed Gefaifia described seeing a woman next to the bus “who had protected her children by covering them with her body, but she ended up dying, poor thing.”
Forensic experts are working to identify the dead and combing fire-afflicted areas to check if there are any more victims, civil protection officials said.
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