Vegetation fire in Türkiye: at least eleven dead, dozens injured and a massacre of livestock

Une information judiciaire a été ouverte. MAXPPP – DIYARBAKIR MUNICIPALITY HANDOUT

Au moins onze personnes ont été tuées et des dizaines blessées dans un feu de végétation qui s'est propagé sous l'effet des vents à plusieurs villages du sud-est de la Turquie, provoquant également la mort de centaines d'animaux.

In an updated report at the beginning of the afternoon, the Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca reported "eleven deaths and 78 people affected& ;quot;. Among them, five had to be placed in intensive care, he said.

Mr. Koca had previously announced "44 injured, including ten seriously", in this rural area located between the cities of Diyarbakir and Mardin, close to the Syrian border.

In addition to the human toll, the images of dozens of charred goats, sheep and donkeys, lying in the burned grass of this mainly agricultural region dedicated to livestock breeding, were widely shared on social networks.

The first wildfires of summer in #Türkiye and #Greece have forced evacuations. Turkey's Dardanelles Strait has been closed to one-way ship traffic due to the ongoing forest fire.pic.twitter.com/eylwV0C1vf

— 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐝 𝐃𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲 (@TheHeraldDiary) June 21, 2024

The villagers of Köksalan, one of the most affected localities, reported to AFP that they had lost half of their approximately 1,000 goats and sheep and were struggling to survive. used Friday to collect the carcasses of their animals.

For the rescued animals who were still standing with great difficulty, their coats burned in the charred black fields, their skin sometimes raw, calls were made to volunteer veterinarians.

"My veterinary brothers, please go to the burned area" said Seracettin Bedirhanoğlu, provincial leader of the main party opposition CHP from the neighboring region of Van, under "unbearable images" of seriously injured animals.

According to the Minister of the Interior, Ali Yerlikaya, the fire broke out late Thursday due to burning of stubble in an area located about thirty kilometers south of Diyarbakir, where the thermometer climbs above 40 degrees during the day.

The flames spread quickly under the influence of the wind, affecting five villages. The disaster was brought under control during the night but "cooling efforts" continued on Friday, according to the minister, for fear of further damage. a resumption of the disaster.

Images broadcast overnight on social networks showed a gigantic fire fanned by the wind and illuminating the red sky, as well as large clouds of smoke.

Seven emergency teams and thirty-five ambulances were dispatched to the scene, Mr. Koca said. A new outbreak broke out on Friday morning near the village of Ergani, in the same region, but was able to be contained, according to an AFP correspondent.

Judicial information

A judicial investigation has been opened, announced the Turkish Minister of Justice, Yilmaz Tunç. During the night, the pro-Kurdish opposition party DEM, the third force in parliament, had urged the authorities to deploy air assets, as they did quickly in recent days after fires broke out in the area. ;#39;west of the country.

"So far, ground intervention has been insufficient. The authorities must intervene more widely and with aerial means without wasting time", the party called in a press release.

On Tuesday, maritime traffic had to be partially suspended for a few hours in the busy Dardanelles Strait, in northwest Turkey, due to a forest fire.

There too, a stubble fire lit by a farmer was the cause of the disaster. The summer of 2021 was marked by violent fires in southwest Turkey, particularly in the steep mountainous area of ​​Mugla province, planted with conifers. A fire even threatened a power station.

The population then discovered, horrified, the absence of working water bomber planes. Nearly 13,000 hectares were destroyed by fires in Turkey in 2024, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis).

The fires that are increasing across the globe are associated with various phenomena anticipated by scientists due to global warming.

The increase in temperature, the multiplication of heatwaves and the drop in precipitation in places represent an ideal combination for the development of fires, which start more easily when the vegetation and soil are very secs.