July 25 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Tunisian authorities have announced the deployment of soldiers in the province of Yenduba to help fight the fires, which affect the area and have spread due to the high temperatures and winds recorded in recent days.
The Tunisian Ministry of Defense has indicated in a statement published on its website that units of the Army, the Air Force and the Navy have been sent to the Melula region to fight against the flames and give help to the residents.
Thus, the Air Force carried out eight overflights with planes and helicopters on Monday to drop water on the fires around the Tabarka airport, while Navy ships collaborated in the evacuation of residents of the area.
Around 150 people have been evacuated from Tabarka in the last few hours, all of them transferred to a hospital in the area and to temporary accommodation centers, as reported by the Tunisian station Mosaique FM.
On the other hand, the Tunisian Civil Protection spokesman, Moez Triaa, has stressed that new fires have been recorded in Bizerte, Béja and Siliana in recent hours, while the director of this organization in Béja, Moez bein Jelifa, has confirmed that a fire has been controlled in Uechtata.
The province of Yenduba is located in the northeast of the country, near the border with Algeria, a country where at least 34 people have died, including ten soldiers, due to the fires registered in recent days due to the heat wave, according to data provided on Monday by the Algerian Ministry of the Interior.
The President of Algeria, Abdelmayid Tebune, has conveyed his condolences for “this painful ordeal”, while the Algerian authorities have opened preliminary investigations to determine the causes of the forest fires and to identify those possibly responsible for them.
