At least 40 people died in wildfires that ravaged Algeria’s Tizi Ouzou province and Bejaia provinces since Monday, the country’s President Abdelmajid Tebboune said, calling the victims ‘martyrs.’
25 soldiers died, including 18 in Tizi-Ouzou and seven in Bejaia diedn while they helped firefighters extinguish the dozens of fires that have spread across Kabyle region, Tebboune said in a tweet late Tuesday night. The death toll of civilian victims in Tizi Ouzou reached 17 fatalities, including a 65 years old man and a 23 years old girl who could not escape the flames.
In Bejaia, seven soldiers were burnt in the flames, after having saved 101 people who were surrounded by the fires. The Ministry of National Defense said six soldiers are in intensive care, in conditions “more or less serious.”
The Minister of the Interior said the investigations will be opened by the security services to elucidate the circumstances of fires and assess damages, suggesting criminal acts behind the fires, that led to “ the simultaneous outbreak of fifty fires across several localities of the wilaya.”
But across the Mediterranean, climate experts are saying the troubling rate of this year’s fire season is a sign of a warming planet that is being made even hotter by the carbon emissions from the fires.
The UN warned in a report published on Monday that current wildfires ravaging parts of Mediterranian region will increase by up to 87 percent if Earth’s average surface temperature warms two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
While 71 percent of the Middle East and North Africa region’s GDP is exposed to high or very high water stress, and 61 percent of its population.
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