Algeria wildfires kill 12 as 69 blazes still burn in the northeast

At least twelve people died on Wednesday as wildfires moved through three provinces in northeastern Algeria. Interior Minister Said Sayoud, speaking in Bejaia, said five were killed in Jijel, four in Bejaia and three in Tizi Ouzou. He was in the region with Health Minister Mohamed Seddik Ait Messaoudene on President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s instructions.

Fifty-four people with burns were admitted to the hospital in Souk El Thenine. Six were in intensive care. Families were moved out of houses as flames reached the edge of settlements. In Jijel, residents took shelter in a post office while smoke filled the street. Gendarmes closed three national roads that tie Bejaia, Jijel and Setif together.

Civil protection put the day’s count at 159 vegetation fires by 8 p.m. local time. Ninety had been extinguished. Sixty-nine were still active. Bejaia had the most open fires at 18, then Skikda with 13, Tizi Ouzou with 12 and Jijel with 7. Earlier in the evening the agency had spoken of 69 blazes still being fought nationwide. Wind made the line harder to hold.

A coast that burns on a schedule

The Kabyle belt has a file of summers like this one. Bejaia lost 30 people to fires three years ago. July this year already produced more than 2,000 blazes and at least six deaths. The present heatwave sits over Algeria and Tunisia together. Dry maquis and pine on steep slopes do the rest once a spark lands.

Sayoud’s provincial split matters because it shows three separate fronts, not one travelling column. Jijel, Bejaia and Tizi Ouzou are neighbours along the Mediterranean hinterland. A night of wind can join them. The road closures already treat the three as a single logistics problem.

Algeria’s civil protection service is built for this season. It is also stretched when 69 fires run at once. Aerial water drops help on accessible ridges and do little in ravines where trucks cannot climb. The ministry has not published a hectare total for Wednesday. The human total is the one it chose to read out first.

What Thursday morning does not change

Evacuated families will try to go home as soon as a slope looks dark. That is when leftover trunks flare. The six critical patients at Souk El Thenine are the immediate medical load. The twelve dead are already past the reach of the hospital visit that brought two ministers east of Algiers.

North Africa’s fire season has lengthened as summer peaks have risen. That sentence is now a staple of every brief. The operational fact for this week is narrower: 69 fires still lit at nightfall, three roads shut, and a hospital in Bejaia working through a burn list of 54 names.