The death toll has reached 32 in Algeria of people dying due to wildfires, including at least 25 soldiers who were trying to save lives. However, they did save 100 people. The Associated Press has the story:
25 soldiers killed trying to save people from Algerian wildfires
ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — At least 25 Algerian soldiers were killed saving residents from the wildfires ravaging mountain forests and villages east of the capital, the president announced Tuesday night as the death toll from the blazes crept up to at least 32.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune tweeted that the soldiers saved 100 citizens from the blazes in two areas of Kabyle, the region that is home to the North African nation’s Berber population. Eleven soldiers were burned burned fighting the fires, four of them seriously, the Defense Ministry said.
The Kabyle region, 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Algeria’s capital of Algiers, is dotted with difficult-to-access villages and has limited water. Some villagers were fleeing, while others tried to hold back the flames themselves, using buckets, branches and rudimentary tools. The region has no water-dumping planes.
The deaths and injuries Tuesday occurred around Kabyle’s capital of Tizi-Ouzou, which is flanked by mountains, and in Bejaia, which borders the Mediterranean Sea.
Prime Minister Aïmene Benabderrahmane told state television that the fires in Kabyle were “highly synchronized,” adding that “leads one to believe these were criminal acts.” Earlier, Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud traveled to Kabyle to assess the situation and also blamed some of the fires on arson.
“Thirty fires at the same time in the same region can’t be by chance,” Beldjoud said on national television, although no arrests were announced.
There were no immediate details to explain the high death toll among the military. A photo pictured on the Liberte daily showed a soldier with a shovel clearing brush, his automatic weapon slung over his shoulder.
Dozens of blazes sprang up Monday in Kabyle and elsewhere, and Algerian authorities sent in the army to help citizens battle blazes and evacuate. Multiple fires were burning through forests and devouring the olive trees, cattle and chickens that provide the livelihoods of families in the Kabyle region.
The Civil Protection authority said on Algerian radio that seven people had died, six in Kabyle and a man in his 80s trying to save his animals in the Setif region to the east. It counted 41 blazes in 18 wilayas, or regions, as of Monday night, with 21 of them burning around Tizi Ouzou.
The online media outlet TSA said earlier Tuesday that up to 11 people had been killed in the blazes, including those in Kabyle.
A 92-year-old woman living in the Kabyle mountain village of Ait Saada said the scene Monday night looked like “the end of the world.”
“We were afraid,” Fatima Aoudia told The Associated Press. “The entire hill was transformed into a giant blaze.”
Aoudia compared the scene to bombings by French troops during Algeria’s brutal independence war, which ended in 1962.
“These burned down forests. It’s a part of me that is gone,” Aoudia said. “It’s a drama for humanity, for nature. It’s a disaster.”
Climate scientists say there is little doubt climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving extreme events, such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms. A worsening drought and heat – both linked to climate change – are driving wildfires in the U.S. West and Russia’s northern region of Siberia. Extreme heat is also fueling the massive fires in Greece and Turkey.
A Civil Protection ambulance driver told the AP that the death toll in Kabyle was higher than the six victims cited by the interior minister but asked not to be identified by name because he was not authorized to speak about the situation.
