Huge fires around Bursa, Turkiye’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 fires and smouldering foliage hung over the city.
Unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions, and strong winds have been fuelling the wildfires, with Turkiye and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean experiencing record-breaking heatwaves.
The death toll from wildfires outside the city of Bursa in northwest Turkiye rose to four late on Sunday 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 Turkiye’s wildfire death toll to 17 since late June, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed on Wednesday in a fire in the northwestern city of Eskisehir.
The fires around Bursa were among hundreds to have hit the country 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.
Turkiye battled at least 44 separate fires on Sunday, said Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli. He identified two fires in Bursa province, as well as blazes in Karabuk in the northwest, 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 Turkiye’s 81 provinces in relation to the fires, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said.