A massive blaze has erupted around Tizi Ouzou and Béjaïa in Kabylia in the northeast of Algeria, local media reported, causing dozens of residents to be evacuated.
However, four Beriev Be-200 water bombers Algeria had ordered from Russia in 2021, and was still waiting for in May, were notably absent in combatting the fire.
Algeria canceled its contract with Spanish company Plysa in June 2022 that would have supplied seven water bombing aircraft after Spain recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the Sahara on April 7, 2022.
Since Friday, the fires have consumed olive groves, fig plantations, chicken coops, beehives, and some homes.
Preliminary reports from the Tizi Ouzou Forest Conservation Services indicated that hundreds of hectares of vegetation have been destroyed.
In Béjaïa, authorities ordered the evacuation of around twenty families from the village of Mezouara, near the Akfadou forest, where the fire started on Sunday.
In late July last year, fires ravaged the northeast of the country, particularly the Béjaïa region, causing at least 34 deaths and destroying thousands of hectares of forests and crops, as well as hundreds of homes.
In August 2022, massive fires in the same region claimed 37 lives around El Tarf.
The summer before in 2021 was the deadliest in decades, with over 90 people perishing in fires that devastated hundreds of thousands of hectares in the northern part of the country.
Since 2021, Kabyles have accused Algeria’s military of deliberately setting the fires under its “Zero Kabyle” policy using incendiary devices dropped from aircraft, questioning why it is only Kabylia that burns each year.
The President of the Movement for Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK) Ferhat Mehenni denounced on Monday Algeria’s carelessness and abandonment of the Kabyles while the region has been ravaged by fire for several days.
“The Kabyles, left to their own devices, have understood that Algeria, which considers them a ‘tumor’ in its body, will never come to their aid,” Mehenni wrote on “X.”
SOS : LES FLAMMES RAVAGENT DE NOUVEAU LA KABYLIE
La Kabylie est toujours la proie des flammes depuis quelques jours. Les Kabyles livrés à eux-mêmes ont compris que l'Algérie qui les considère comme une "tumeur" dans son corps, ne leur viendra jamais en aide.
L'Algerie qui…
— FERHAT MEHENNI (@FerhatMhenni) August 12, 2024
Mehenni asserted that this is part of Algeria’s systematic campaign against the Kabyle people, known as “Operation Zero Kabyle.”
The MAK head raised concerns for the ears of the international community and the United Nations about “the deliberate refusal of Algerian authorities to fulfill their state obligations under the UN Charter to protect the Kabyle population from the ongoing fires.”
He added that there are serious allegations of premeditated arson across Kabylie and a reported disregard for offers of assistance from neighboring countries to extinguish the blazes.
Mehenni noted that Algeria is accused of engaging in terrorism against those who criticize its “political repression, torture, and arbitrary sentencing of Kabyle individuals,” while also deliberately refusing assistance to the “endangered” people of Kabylia.
MAK has also accused the Algerian authorities of “committing genocide” in Kabylia in two petitions to international courts. Mehenni warned that this may have “consequences that could impact the entire Mediterranean Basin, if not the planet,” he wrote.
He added that “if Kabylie were an independent entity, it would have adequate resources to manage such crises and support neighboring regions.”
Algeria’s military regime has alternately claimed that the fires were set deliberately by the Movement for Self-Determination of Kabylia, or by Morocco or Israel.