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CHIQUITOS, Bolivia (AFP) — Wildfires, mostly started intentionally, have scorched almost 600,000 hectares of land in eastern Bolivia already this year, authorities said. On Monday night there were 20 active fires in Santa Cruz state affecting seven protected areas. The government said 200,000 hectares (495,000 acres) had burned in just two days. Most of the fires are in the forests of Chiquitania, a region that lies between the Amazon to the north, the plains of […]
ATHENS, Greece (AFP) — Scores of firefighters backed by water-dropping aircraft battled a forest fire that broke out early Monday on the southern part of Greece’s Evia island, less than two weeks after an inferno decimated its northern part. The fire was burning near the village of Fygia where two neighborhoods have been evacuated and was moving toward the coastal tourist village of Marmari, where authorities were preparing boats to evacuate people if needed, according […]
LISBON, Portugal (AFP) — More than 600 firefighters on Tuesday managed to bring a blaze under control a day after it broke out in southern Portugal, forcing dozens of people to flee their homes. The civil protection authority said the still active blaze in the tourist region of Algarve had been brought under control — although it has already torn through at least 9,000 hectares (22,000 acres) of forests, orchards and brushland. Portugal is the […]
JERUSALEM, Undefined (AFP) — Wildfires that have ravaged woodland in the hills west of Jerusalem since noon on Sunday have finally been brought under control, the Israeli fire service said on Tuesday. “After 52 hours battling the flames, all of the fires around Jerusalem have been brought under control,” a statement said. Hundreds of families had been evacuated from 10 villages west of the city over the three days. The firefighters said there were no […]
ALGIERS, Algeria (AFP) — Algerian police Tuesday announced another 25 arrests over the lynching of a man falsely accused of starting deadly forest fires last week, taking the total number of suspects to 61. The latest arrests were made in several provinces across the country, police said in a statement, adding that the suspects were also accused of damaging public and police property. The victim, Djamel Ben Ismail, 38, had turned himself in at a […]
MARSEILLE, France (AFP) — Thousands of people, including tourists in campsites, have been evacuated from the Var region of southern France due to a wildfire, a spokeswoman for the fire department told AFP on Tuesday. “Thousands of people have been evacuated as a precautionary measure, but there are no victims. Around 750 firefighters are fighting the fire, which is still very fierce,” she said. © Agence France-Presse
ATHENS, Greece (AFP) — Greek firefighters struggled to control two new blazes that broke out around Athens on Monday, forcing the evacuation of several villages and clouding the sky over the capital as they braced for a long night battling the flames. Greece’s prime minister has linked the devastating fires to the “climate crisis”, speaking last week as wildfires swept across the Mediterranean, engulfing parts of Greece, Italy and Spain. Scores of firefighters battled fresh […]
JERUSALEM, Undefined (AFP) — Residents of several villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem were evacuated on Sunday because of a large forest fire nearby, Israeli police said. Firemen supported by firefighting aircraft were working to extinguish the blaze as the smoke blotted out the sky across much of the city. A spokesman for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office said he had held a special meeting with security officials. The fire threatened the villages of Beit […]
Turkey battled disaster on two fronts on Saturday with eight people dying when a fire-fighting aircraft crashed and rescuers racing to find survivors of flash floods in the north that have killed at least 55. Ankara and Moscow announced that all eight people on the Russian plane had perished on the fire-fighting mission. The air tragedy came just as Turkey was gaining control of hundreds of wildfires that killed eight people and destroyed swathes of […]
ATHENS, Greece (AFP) — Fires burning for over a week that caused Greece’s worst ecological disaster in decades were finally placed under control Friday, the fire department said. “As of yesterday, there is no major active front, just scattered pockets,” a fire department spokesman told AFP. Rain and falling temperatures helped the fire-dousing effort, but crews remain on alert for possible flare-ups in hard-to-access ravines on the island of Evia and in the region of […]
MADRID, Spain (AFP) — Firefighters battled three wildfires in Spain on Thursday as a heatwave that has enveloped southeastern Europe in recent days shifted west towards the Iberian peninsula. Dozens of firefighters backed by four water-dropping aircraft were on the scene of a blaze in the northeastern province of Tarragona which has so far destroyed some 40 hectares (100 acres) of protected forest, local officials said. Two smaller fires were burning in the northern wine-producing […]
ROME, Italy (AFP) — Italian firefighters said Thursday they had battled more than 500 blazes overnight as another death was reported, taking the total toll linked to wildfires to four over the past week. An anticyclone dubbed Lucifer is sweeping across Italy, sending temperatures soaring and causing what is believed to be a new European record of 48.8 degrees Celsius (119.8 Fahrenheit) in Sicily on Wednesday. Southern Europe has experienced intense heatwaves and wildfires this […]
