Four men suspected of arson were arrested and will be brought before a court, authorities in Mdik-Fnidek province, near the port of Tangier, also said.
Three firefighters lost their lives and two others were seriously injured trying to put out a large forest fire in the north Morocco which, according to the preliminary investigation, came from a human hand.
The five firefighters were in a vehicle that fell into a ravine, local authorities told AFP.
Four men suspected of arson were arrested and will be brought before a court, authorities in Mdik-Fnidek province, near the port of Tangier, also said.
Based on the first calculations, the fire has turned to ashes about 900 hectares of forest area. Firefighters, with the help of Canadian aircraft, are battling the flames to prevent the fire from spreading to residential areas.
Last month four people died in forest fires in northern Morocco. At the end of July, a villager was taken into custody on charges of negligent arson in the province of Lara.
Like all of Southwestern Europe, Morocco is faced with heatwave conditions, with very high temperatures and severe drought.
In France, more than 360 European firefighters – out of a total of 650 mobilized – continue today to extinguish the many fires that remain active in the south-west, where 74,000 hectares of forest have been reduced to ashes since July. Last week, 146 Polish “stazaki” with 21 vehicles, 141 German and Austrian “fouerverloite” and 77 Romanian “pompierii” were deployed to this zone, on the Atlantic side, as part of the activation of the European Union’s civil protection mechanism. Reinforcements deemed necessary since the fire “continues to burn underground,” according to Gironde fire chief Laurent Pham. “Our mission now is to extinguish the active outbreaks (…) and avoid a resurgence of the fire that has been contained but not yet brought under control,” he continued. This task is expected to be difficult, as forecasters predict a further rise in temperatures next week.
21 firefighters from Polynesia, as well as their colleagues from the French Indian Ocean islands of Reunion and Mayotte, are also expected to arrive in the area late tonight.
According to Bordeaux prosecutors, there is currently no indication that this fire, which started on August 9, a month after two other, huge fires in the same areas, was due to criminal activity. Last week, Interior Minister Géral Darmanen expressed suspicions that it was arson, after eight fires appeared within a few hundred meters of each other within an hour.
RES-EMP
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