ALGIERS: Raging fires in Algeria have killed 25 soldiers and 17 civilians, the North African country’s defence ministry said on Tuesday.

Multiple fires were burning through forests and devouring the olive trees, cattle and chickens that provide the livelihoods of families in the mountainous Kabyle region. Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud traveled to Kabyle, home of the Berbers, to assess the situation.

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.

Other northern areas of Algeria also had active wildfires. It counted 41 blazes in 18 wilayas, or regions, as of Monday night, with 21 of them burning around the Kabyle capital of Tizi Ouzou.

The online media outlet TSA said up to 11 people had been killed in the blazes in Kabyle. Many started on Monday, spurred on by high temperatures and wind.

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 said. The entire hill was transformed into a giant blaze.

Like older adults quoted by Algerian media, Aoudia compared the scene to bombings by French troops during Algeria’s brutal independence war, which ended in 1962. These burned down forests. Its a part of me that is gone, Aoudia said. Its a drama for humanity, for nature. Its a disaster.

The Defence Ministry said that soldiers were sent into four regions, including Kabylie, the day before to help battle the blaze and evacuate trapped residents. Bulldozers were brought in to cut firebreaks into thick forests.

Despite the damage, the multiple blazes in this North African country were limited in scope compared to the blazes ravaging Greece’s second-largest island of Evia and other areas in that country.

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 US West and Siberia. Extreme heat is also fueling the massive fires in Greece and Turkey.

The Kabyle region, 100 kilometres east of Algeria’s capital of Algiers, is dotted with difficult-to-access villages and water is in short supply during the hot season. Some villagers were fleeing, while others tried to hold back the flames themselves, using buckets, branches and other means. The region has no water-dumping planes.

Published in Dawn, August 11th, 2021