Siberia's wildfires close to being extinguished: Official
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MOSCOW • The Russian authorities said they were close to putting out the devastating forest fires that have ripped across Siberia this summer and which environmentalists have linked to climate change.
In hard-hit Yakutia - Russia's largest and coldest region - wildfires have burned through 9.9 million ha, an area larger than Portugal.
Smoke from the fires in the sparsely populated region that sits atop permafrost reached the North Pole earlier this month, said the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
By Thursday, the fires were active in an area of around 520,000ha, according to Russia's forestry agency, as the region experienced rainfall and a drop in temperatures.
"The President (Vladimir Putin) instructed us to extinguish the fires in Yakutia. This task is almost complete," said Mr Alexander Chupriyan, deputy head of Russia's Emergencies Ministry, on Thursday.
He added that the remaining fires were under control, the Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
While wildfires affect Russia every summer, in recent years they have ripped through the country's vast forests with growing intensity, driven by record high temperatures.
So far this year, blazes have ravaged over 17 million ha, making it Russia's second-worst wildfire season since the turn of the century.
Mr Putin on Tuesday pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to protect the country's forests, saying the nation must "learn lessons" from this year's fires.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
