ALGIERS/TIZI OUZOU: Firefighters, troops and civilian volunteers battled blazes in forests across northern Algeria on Wednesday as the country reeled at a death toll of at least 65 people in the latest wildfires to hit the Mediterranean.
Soldiers deployed to back the overstretched emergency services tackle the rash of more than 50 fires that broke out on Tuesday accounted for 28 of those killed, state television reported.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris would send two water bombers to the Kabyle region, promising on Twitter to support the country combat the violent fires.
“To the Algerian people, I want to give our full support (and) as of tomorrow, two Canadair aircraft and a command plane will be deployed in Kabyle,” he said. There are no such planes in the rugged area yet.
He also offered “unreserved solidarity” with the Algerian people in “facing this tragedy.”
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian expressed France’s solidarity with the Algerian people.
“Our hearts go out to all the victims and their loved ones,” he said on Twitter, adding: “France stands ready to lend its support to deal with this situation.”
Benoit Payan, the mayor of Marseille city, where a large number of the Algerian-French nationals reside, also offered to send a team of firefighters and equipment to Kabyle, “if Algeria requests it.”
Algeria’s government later said it had reached an agreement with the European Union to hire two firefighting planes. The prime minister’s office said the planes, which will be in action from Thursday, had been used to tackle blazes in Greece.
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI expressed readiness to dispatch two aircraft and was waiting for approval from Algerian authorities to go ahead, Morocco’s state news agency MAP said.
The authorities say they suspect widespread arson after so many fires erupted in such a short space of time. They have announced several arrests but have yet to elaborate on the identity or suspected motives of those detained.
Images of trapped villagers, terrified livestock and forested hillsides reduced to blackened stumps were shared on social media, many of them accompanied by pleas for help.
AFP journalists saw villagers desperately trying to put out the spreading fires with makeshift brooms in an effort to save their homes.
High winds fueled the rapid spread of the fires in the tinder-dry conditions created by a heat wave across North Africa and the wider Mediterranean, fire official Youcef Ould Mohamed told the state-run APS news agency.
A total of 69 separate wildfires remained active Wednesday, spread across 17 provinces, emergency services spokesman Nassim Barnaoui told reporters.
Most of the fires and 16 of the deaths were recorded in Tizi Ouzou district, in the mainly Berber region of Kabyle, east of the capital Algiers.
“I left all my stock in my village and fled to Tizi Ouzou with my wife and three children,” said Abdelhamid Boudraren, a shopkeeper from the village of Beni Yeni.
“Luckily I own a flat in the center of Tizi Ouzou where I’m holed up with my family and some neighbors.”
There have been mounting calls for aid convoys to be sent to the worst-hit districts with food and medicine from the capital.
On Wednesday, an AFP correspondent saw several lorries headed to Tizi Ouzou with aid donated by the public.
An appeal for volunteer doctors to assist the city’s overstretched medical services also appeared on Facebook.
State media have reported four arrests for suspected arson.
Meteorologists expect the heat wave across North Africa to continue until the end of the week, with temperatures in Algeria reaching 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit).
In neighboring Tunisia, the capital Tunis hit an all-time record of 49 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.
The Tunisian emergency services reported 15 fires across the north and northwest, but no casualties.
On the northern shores of the Mediterranean, Turkey reported eight deaths and Greece three from wildfires that have raged for the past two weeks.
Each summer, Algeria endures seasonal wildfires but rarely with anything approaching this year’s toll.
In 2020, nearly 440 square kilometers (170 square miles) of forest were destroyed by fire, and several people were arrested on suspicion of arson.
On Monday, the UN released a major report showing how the threat from global warming is even more acute than previously thought.
It highlighted how scientists are quantifying the extent to which human-induced warming increases the intensity and/or likelihood of a specific extreme weather event, such as a heatwave or a wildfire.
Climate change amplifies droughts, creating ideal conditions for wildfires to spread out of control and inflict unprecedented material and environmental damage.
(With AFP and Reuters)
Algeria mourns 65 dead as Mediterranean wildfires spread
https://arab.news/v4cnu
Algeria mourns 65 dead as Mediterranean wildfires spread
- A total of 69 separate wildfires remained active Wednesday, spread across 17 provinces
- France, EU and Morocco to dispatch aircraft to help Algeria tackle the blazes
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government
- Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
- Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders
DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”
