Algeria wildfires kill 12 as 154 blazes burn through a North African heatwave
Interior Minister Said Sayoud counted five dead in Jijel, four in Bejaia and three in Tizi Ouzou. Fifty-four people have burns. Six are in intensive care at Souk El Thenine.
Algiers2 min read
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Twelve people died in wildfires across northeastern Algeria on 26 August, Interior Minister Said Sayoud said that night. Five of the dead were in Jijel province, four in Bejaia and three in Tizi Ouzou. Civil protection counted 154 fire outbreaks in a single day. Bejaia alone had 36, of which 18 were brought under control by evening.
Sayoud spoke at the hospital in Souk El Thenine, in Bejaia, where 54 people were treated for burns. Six were in intensive care. Families were moved out of several communes in Bejaia and Jijel as flames reached the edge of built-up areas. By 20:00 local time, 69 fires were still active, including 18 in Bejaia and seven in Jijel.
Later civil-protection figures put the day’s plant-cover fires at 159 across 16 eastern wilayas, with 90 extinguished and 69 still being fought. Skikda reported seven fires, El Tarf and Jijel five each, Annaba four.
A heatwave over Algeria and Tunisia supplied the weather. Kabylie has burned in successive summers since 2021, the year 90 people died in the region, 57 of them civilians and 33 soldiers trapped on a rescue. Fires in 2022 killed 37 around El Tarf. Fires in 2023 killed at least 34, many of them in Bejaia. From 1 May to 20 July this year civil protection logged about 4,000 fires, against 1,501 in the same stretch of 2025, a rise of about 167 percent. Six people had already died in July’s fires.
The geography is consistent. The fires sit in the coastal and mountain wilayas east of Algiers: Tizi Ouzou, Bejaia, Jijel, Skikda, El Tarf. Olive groves, scrub and village edges burn in the same week. Aerial assets this season have included AT-802 water bombers and helicopters. Ground crews still do most of the work once the wind drops after dark.
Sayoud’s hospital visit is the state’s first detailed death list for this pulse. It does not answer how the 154 ignitions started. Algeria has in past years blamed arson and, in 2021, a separatist group. Independent proof of a single cause for a 154-fire day is not on the record. Heat, wind and dry fuel are on the record.
Tunisia is under the same dome of hot air. If the ridge holds, Wednesday’s 154 will not be the week’s peak. The number that will decide the death toll is whether the six patients in intensive care at Souk El Thenine survive, and whether another night of wind pushes fire into another set of villages before crews can cut a line.
