Hello and welcome to the details of Turkey wildfire toll claims 11 lives, hundreds of animals lost and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Residents told AFP around half their flock of about 1,000 sheep and goats had perished in the blaze. — AFP pic
CINAR, June 21 — A huge wildfire that swept through several villages in mainly Kurdish south-eastern Turkey overnight killed 11 people, authorities said today.
Hundreds of animals also perished in the blaze that roared across the dry landscape, sending flames into the night sky.
By morning the fire had left huge areas of charred and blackened land in several areas of Diyarbakir and Mardin provinces.
“11 people lost their lives”, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca wrote on X, a figure up from the previously reported five.
Advertisement
He said 78 people were affected by the fires, adding that five patients were under intensive care.
Turkey’s pro-Kurdish DEM party, which won many municipalities in the southeast in the March 31 local elections, criticised the government’s intervention as “late and insufficient”.
During the night, DEM had urged the government to send water bombers, saying fighting the blaze from the ground was “not enough”.
Advertisement
An AFP reporter in Koksalan village in Diyarbakir province saw around 100 animals lying dead on the ground.
Animals perished
Residents told AFP around half their flock of about 1,000 sheep and goats had perished in the blaze.
A local vet confirmed around half the flock had died, without giving a precise number, telling AFP many others were being treated for burns.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya blamed the fire on “a stubble burn” which started late on Thursday and spread quickly due to strong winds, affecting five villages.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said on X the public prosecutor’s office had opened a probe into the cause of the fire.
Turkey has experienced 74 wildfires so far this year, which have ravaged 12,910 hectares of land, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
In the summer of 2021, Turkey suffered its worst-ever wildfires. They claimed nine lives and destroyed huge swathes of forested land across its Mediterranean and Aegean coasts.
The disaster prompted a political crisis after it emerged that Turkey had no functioning firefighting planes.
It heaped pressure on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who was forced to accept international help.
It also prompted Ankara to push through Turkey’s delayed ratification of the Paris Climate Accord, becoming the last of the Group of 20 major economies to do so.
Experts say climate change will cause more frequent and more intense wildfires and other natural disasters in Turkey unless measures are taken to tackle the problem. — AFP
These were the details of the news Turkey wildfire toll claims 11 lives, hundreds of animals lost for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Malay Mail and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
