at least 43 dead and nearly 200 injured in fires, new report shows

At least 43 people have died in the gigantic fires that have ravaged the forest and urban areas of northeastern Algeria in recent days, according to a new report provided Monday, August 22 by the national gendarmerie. The command of the National Gendarmerie also affirmed that “the process of identifying the bodies continues”suggesting that the balance sheet could still increase further.

A previous report reported the death of 38 people in these fires which affected 14 governorates, in particular the region of El Taref, in the far northeast, near the border with Tunisia. The gendarmerie, quoted by Algerian radio, also announced the arrest of 13 people suspected of being involved in these arson attacks which also left nearly 200 injured, many of them seriously burned. For its part, civil protection announced that in 24 hours (from Saturday to Sunday), 31 fires were extinguished in different regions of Algeria, after new fire starts.

Experts have also pointed to shortcomings in the fire-fighting system with a lack of water bombers and poor forest management. On Saturday, an expert told AFP that about 10,000 hectares, or more than 10% of the area of ​​the El Kala National Park (PNEK) in northeastern Algeria, classified by Unesco as biodiversity reserve, had been destroyed by recent fires.

denouncing “a nibbled forest” through the establishment of a “dense road network” and of “new localities” in the middle of the park, the expert, former director of the PNEK, Rafik Baba Ahmed, said to himself “very pessimistic” for its future and the maintenance of its status by Unesco. Every summer, northern Algeria is affected by forest fires but this phenomenon is accentuated from year to year under the effect of climate change which results in droughts and heat waves.