Mourning in Algeria amid blazes
Print Edition
Blazes raged across northern Algeria yesterday as the country observed a national day of mourning for dozens of people killed in the latest wildfires to sweep the Mediterranean.
The North African country has been in the grip of devastating fires since Monday that have claimed 69 lives 鈥 41 civilians and 28 soldiers.
Soldiers and civilian volunteers have joined firefighters on multiple fronts in the effort to extinguish the blazes that have been fanned by windy and tinder-dry conditions.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared three days of national mourning starting from yesterday, and authorities say they suspect widespread arson after so many fires erupted in such a short space of time.
On the fourth day of the wildfires, efforts to overcome the blazes are continuing in many regions where civilians and soldiers often with limited means joined the fight.
Images of trapped villagers, terrified livestock and forested hillsides reduced to blackened stumps have been shared on social media.
Algeria is also chartering two firefighting planes from the European Union, aircraft recently used to stop fires in Greece.
France announced on Wednesday that it was sending three more aircraft.
Neighbouring Morocco, with whom Algeria has long had strained ties over the Western Sahara, also expressed a readiness to help by providing two planes.
Faced with the scale of the disaster, pleas for help are multiplying in Algeria and beyond.
鈥淚ndividuals and associations are mobilizing ... by organizng collections of clothes, foodstuffs, medicines and hygiene products,鈥 said the TSA news website, calling it a 鈥渟urge of solidarity.鈥
High winds fuelled the rapid spread of the flames in tinder-dry conditions.
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