MOSCOW (AFP, REUTERS) - At least eight people died in Siberia on Saturday (May 7) as fires ripped through hundreds of buildings in several villages, with high winds hampering efforts to extinguish the blazes.

In the Krasnoyarsk region, about 3,000km east of Moscow, fires killed five people in 16 settlements across the Kazachinskoe and Sharypovsky districts, the local branch of Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement, leading it to launch criminal proceedings for causing death by negligence.

The local health ministry said 17 people had been hurt, with 11 of them taken to hospital, the TASS news agency reported.

The Federal Forestry Agency said short circuits in power lines had caused 350 houses to catch fire, and that strong winds had exacerbated the situation, TASS said.

“Aircraft cannot be used in fighting the fires due to the high wind load,” Krasnoyarsk’s emergencies service said on its Telegram channel.

It posted video footage showing the sky darkened by smoke, with rescue workers buffeted by strong gusts as they tackled a number of blazes in rural areas with predominantly wooden buildings.

Russia’s Aerial Forest Protection Service later published footage of fires in wooded areas, all of which it said were quickly contained.

The Investigative Committee also reported fires in the neighbouring Khakassia region.

Slightly further west, investigators in the Kemerovo region also launched criminal proceedings and said the burnt bodies of three people had been found in a residential building in the Tyazhinsky locality, where more than 50 houses had caught fire.

Both sets of investigators said work was continuing to determine the cause of the fires.

Siberia has suffered from large scale fires for some years.

Last year, they belched 16 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, according to an annual European climate report.