NICOSIA/KANTÁRA, Cyprus — Firefighting
aircraft from both sides of divided
Cyprus on Thursday battled a blaze that
scorched mountainsides and forced the evacuation of villages.
اضافة اعلان
Fanned by strong winds, the fire spread rapidly
overnight after breaking out earlier in the week in the Kantara area of the
Kyrenia mountain range in the breakaway
Turkish Cypriot statelet of northern
Cyprus, media reports said.
In the end, it was Mother Nature that extinguished a
wildfire that scorched thousands of hectares and forced the evacuation of
villages in the north of divided Cyprus, officials said Saturday.
Aircraft from both sides of Cyprus, as well as
British military and Israeli personnel, had responded to calls for help to
fight the fire which began Tuesday in the Kantara area of the Kyrenia mountain
range.
“The fire ... has been extinguished to a large
extent with the effect of the rain that fell last night,” said Unal Ustel,
prime minister of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognized
only by Ankara.
“We have survived a great disaster.”
There had been no reports of casualties but Turkish
Cypriot authorities said about 8,000 hectares had been burned.
Helicopters were still dropping water onto the
burning ridge lines on Friday, before intense rains fell overnight.
Forestry department head Cemil Karzaoglu said the
fire was completely under control and mopping up operations were continuing
where smoke was still visible.
Ustel expressed gratitude to “the British Base Area,
Israel, and the Greek Cypriot administration for their support in extinguishing
the fire from the air”.
The UN peacekeeping force said it coordinated the
firefighting response.
According to Cypriot media reports earlier, at least
four villages were evacuated.
Emergency services from Israel and the
UK’s
Sovereign Base Areas on the eastern Mediterranean island often help fight
Cyprus’s frequent wildfires.
In July last year, blazes that broke out in the
Larnaca and Limassol regions claimed the lives of four Egyptian farmworkers and
destroyed more than 4,800 hectares.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish
forces occupied the northern part of the island in response to a military coup
sponsored by the junta in power in
Greece at the time.
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