Two volunteer firefighters die amid wildfires in Turkey

The death toll from wildfires outside the city of Bursa in north-west Turkey has risen to four after two volunteer firefighters died.

The pair died in hospital after they were pulled from a water tanker that rolled while heading to a forest fire, news agency IHA reported.

Another worker died earlier at the scene of the accident and a firefighter died on Sunday after suffering a heart attack.

Their deaths raised Turkey’s wildfire fatalities to 17 since late June, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed on Wednesday in a fire in Eskisehir, western Turkey.

Huge fires around Bursa, Turkey’s fourth-largest city, broke out over the weekend, leading to more than 3,500 people fleeing their homes.

On Monday morning, fog-like smoke from ongoing fires and smouldering foliage hung over the city.

Unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds have been fuelling the wildfires, with Turkey and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean experiencing record-breaking heatwaves.

The fires around Bursa were among hundreds to have hit Turkey over the past month.

While firefighting teams have contained the damage to a limited number of homes, vast tracts of forest have been turned to ash.

The water tanker crew comprised volunteers from nearby Bolu province heading to the village of Aglasan, north-east of Bursa, to combat a blaze when the vehicle fell into a ditch while negotiating a rough forest track, IHA reported.

Turkey battled at least 44 separate fires on Sunday, forestry minister Ibrahim Yumakli said late on Sunday.

He identified two fires in Bursa province, as well as blazes in Karabuk, north-west Turkey, and Kahramanmaras in the south, as the most serious.

The government declared disaster areas in two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik.

Prosecutions have been launched against 97 people in 33 of Turkey’s 81 provinces in relation to the fires, justice minister Yilmaz Tunc said.

A crowd of people gathered on Sunday evening outside a police station in the village of Harmancik, 57 kilometres (35 miles) south of Bursa, after learning a suspected arsonist was detained there.

The angry crowd demanded for the suspect to be handed over to them.

The crowd dispersed after police assured them a thorough investigation would be undertaken.

In Albania, firefighters battled at least six separate wildfires on Monday, the Defence Ministry said.

Two weeks of blazes have ravaged thousands of hectares of forest in the Balkan country.

The areas most at risk were in the north east, where inaccessible mountain plateaus had water-dropping aircraft carrying out the bulk of the firefighting.

In the country’s southern region, overnight winds ignited blazes in the municipalities of Delvine and Konispol in the Himare district on the Adriatic coast, which suffered wildfires last week.

Authorities said at least a dozen people were arrested over the weekend over the wildfires.