Dozens of wildfires in Canada remain out of control as Quebec orders more evacuations

Jan 20, 2024

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MONTREAL: Northern Quebec's largest town was being evacuated on Tuesday as firefighters worked to beat back threats from out-of-control blazes in remote communities in the northern and northwestern parts of the province. According to the province's forest fire prevention agency, more than 150 forest fires were burning in the province on Tuesday, including more than 110 deemed out of control. The intense Canadian wildfires are blanketing the northeastern US and parts of Eastern Canada in a haze, turning the air acrid, the sky yellowish gray and prompting warnings for vulnerable populations to stay inside. The effects of hundreds of wildfires burning in Quebec could be felt as far away as New York City and New England, blotting out skylines and irritating throats. Late Tuesday, authorities issued an evacuation order for Chibougamau, Quebec, a town of about 7,500 in the remote region of the province. Authorities said the evacuation was underway and promised more details Wednesday. "We’re following all of this from hour to hour, obviously," Premier François Legault told reporters in Sept-Îles, Quebec. "If we look at the situation in Quebec as a whole, there are several places where it is still worrying." Legault said the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region in northwestern Quebec is an area of particular concern, with the communities of Normétal and Lebel-sur-Quévillon under threat. The mayor of Lebel-sur-Quévillon, where about 2,100 people were forced from their homes on the weekend, said the fire is about 10 kilometers outside of town, but its advance has been slower than expected. "The fire started in an area where there were no trees, which slowed it down considerably," Mayor Guy Lafrenière said. Other northern communities at risk include Chibougamau the Cree village of Chisasibi on the eastern shore of James Bay. Firefighting resources have also been dispatched to Hydro-Québec's Micoua substation near Baie-Comeau, Legault said. On Monday, Legault said authorities had no choice but to leave the hamlet of Clova to burn, drawing the ire of local residents. Legault said Tuesday that he had simply repeated what fire prevention officials told him: the fire around the tiny community about 325 kilometers northwest of Montreal was too intense to send water bombers. That remained true Tuesday, he said, but he noted that no homes had burned. Dominic Vincent, the owner of the Auberge Restaurant Clova, said that by Monday afternoon, the situation in the area had already improved, aided by cooler temperatures and a change in wind direction. While smoke remained visible, it was far less intense, he said. Quebec Natural Resources Minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina told reporters in Quebec City that evacuees across the province number just over 8,300, down from 10,000 to start the week, but the Abitibi region remains a concern. "We are not expecting rain in the short term, which is what makes it more difficult to fight fires," Blanchette Vézina said.

ROME: More than 1,400 migrants have been rescued from overcrowded vessels, including a sailboat, in four separate operations in the Mediterranean Sea off southern Italy, the Italian coast guard said Wednesday. There were 47 migrants, including two children in immediate need of medical care, aboard the sailboat in distress off the region of Calabria, in the "toe" of the Italian peninsula, a coast guard statement said. They were rescued by a coast guard motorboat early Tuesday. The statement said the rescues began late Monday night and ended in the early hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria's east coast. One coast guard vessel took on around 590 migrants from aboard a fishing boat, and then later brought on around 650 migrants from another fishing boat, the statement said. A coast guard motorboat and an Italian border police ship came to the assistance of a fourth vessel, with 130 migrants aboard. Authorities didn't immediately give details on the nationalities of the passengers or routes taken by the migrant vessels. But generally, many boats with migrants sighted off the Ionian Sea set out from Turkiye's coast, where smugglers launch crowded and unseaworthy boats. Earlier this year, a migrant boat navigating on that route slammed into a sandbank just off a Calabrian beach town and broke apart. At least 94 migrants perished and 80 others survived. That shipwreck is under criminal investigation, including the role of several members of Italy's border police corps, which operates vessels off the country's long coastline. Four suspected smugglers have been arrested. In addition, prosecutors want to know if rescue efforts could have been launched hours earlier. Italian border police boats reportedly turned back to port because of rough seas, and by the time a coast guard vessel, better equipped to navigate in poor sea conditions, reached the area, bodies were already in the water. In that case, the migrant boat had been spotted hours earlier by a surveillance aircraft operated by Frontex, the European Union's border monitoring force. Wednesday's statement by the coast guard said that crew on a Frontex surveillance plane had spotted a fishing boat with the 590 migrants aboard. A Frontex patrol boat and a Frontex support vessel were among the assets involved in the rescue operations for the two fishing boats, according to the coast guard. Alarm Phone, a nongovernmental organization that frequently receives satellite calls from migrant vessels in distress and relays the information to maritime authorities in Italy and Malta, was among the organizations signaling the need for rescue for the 130 people aboard the fourth boat.

ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday proposed, in a call with his Ukrainian counterpart, creating an international commission to probe the destruction of a major dam in southern Ukraine, his office reported. Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for the destruction of Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which was ripped open early Tuesday after a reported blast. "President Erdogan said that a commission could be established with the participation of experts from the warring parties, the United Nations and the international community, including Turkiye, for a detailed investigation into the explosion at Kakhovka dam," his office said after the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Kakhovka dam sits on the Dnipro River, which feeds a reservoir providing cooling water for the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe's largest, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) upstream. The destruction of the dam caused torrents of water to pour into the Dnipro, pushing thousands of civilians to flee the flooded areas while raising fears of an ecological disaster. NATO member Turkiye, which has good ties with Moscow and Kyiv.

NEW DELHI: The first batch of 630 pilgrims from Indian-administered Kashmir performing Hajj this year left for Saudi Arabia on Wednesday from Srinagar airport, an official from the region's Hajj authority said.

Out of India's annual Hajj quota of 1,75,025 pilgrims, 12,000 will be departing from the Himalayan region, nearly double Kashmir's Hajj contingent last year and the region's largest-ever group embarking on the spiritual journey that is one of the five pillars of Islam.

Special Hajj flights from India started in the last week of May.

"We have the highest quota this year," Safina Baig, chairperson of the Jammu and Kashmir Haj Committee, told Arab News after 630 pilgrims departed for Jeddah from Kashmir's main airport in Srinagar.

"It was an emotional scene with many feeling overwhelmed by the opportunity to perform Hajj in their lifetime."

Most pilgrims were selected through a draw, except for the elderly and women traveling without a mahram, or male guardian.

"Generally, the selection process happens through draw but as a special gesture we are allowing single women and people above 70 to apply directly without going through the process of draw," Baig said.

Special arrangements had been made by the Indian government for women traveling without a mahram, she said, including separate accommodation and women helpers.

"By Allah's grace, I got the opportunity to travel alone to perform Hajj," said Shamima Akhter, 56, a widow from the southern Pulwama district of Kashmir, who is among 120 Kashmiri women pilgrims traveling to Saudi Arabia alone.

"This is a good decision to allow single women to travel."

Akhter's three daughters helped her raise about $5,000 to pay for her Hajj package, which is around $1,000 more expensive for Kashmir compared with other regions of India.

Baig said she had raised the issue of the higher cost with the Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Haj Committee of India.

"What I understand is that the rise in the total expenses is due to higher prices of air fare from Kashmir," she said.

"Kashmir is a Muslim majority region, and the government should be more considerate … I feel that the government should provide some relief to the Kashmiri Hajis. It sends a good message."

OUAGADOUGOU: Twenty-one people, most of them members of the security forces, have been killed in Burkina Faso in attacks by suspected militants, security sources said on Wednesday. Fourteen members of the VDP volunteer militia and four soldiers died on Monday in Sawenga in central-eastern Burkina, while five were wounded, a source said. Another security source confirmed the toll, saying that the clash occurred during an operation to secure the area, and that "more than 50 terrorists were neutralized" in an airborne counter-attack. Separately, a police source said a policeman and two civilians were killed on Monday night in an attack on a police border post at Yendere, on the southwestern frontier with Ivory Coast. A trucker in the area confirmed the attack, adding that many local people had already fled into Ivory Coast because of militant incursions. Ivory Coast hosts around 18,000 Burkinabe refugees, more than double the tally for 2022, according to the UN's refugee agency. One of the poorest and most troubled countries in the world, Burkina is struggling with a militant insurgency that swept in from neighboring Mali in 2015. Nearly a third of the country lies outside the government's control, according to official estimates. More than 10,000 civilians, troops and police have died, according to an NGO count, while at least two million people have been displaced. Anger within the military at failures to roll back the insurgency sparked two coups last year, culminating in the ascent of a young army captain, Ibrahim Traore. The junta has ruled out any negotiations with the militants. It is staking much of its anti-militant strategy on the VDP — the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland militia. The force comprises civilian volunteers who are given two weeks’ military training and then work alongside the army, typically carrying out surveillance, information-gathering or escort duties. Since its inception in December 2019, the VDP has suffered hundreds of casualties, especially in ambushes or roadside bombings. Despite the losses, the authorities launched a successful recruitment drive last year, encouraging 90,000 people to sign up, far exceeding the target of 50,000.

MANILA: A Philippine court has denied a bail request from Leila de Lima, a former senator and staunch critic of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, the defendant's lawyer said on Wednesday, thereby prolonging her detention. "Sad to inform you that the court denied Senator Leila's bail application," Filibon Tacardon, her legal counsel, told reporters. The petition was for a drug case that saw de Lima accused of conspiring to commit illegal narcotics trade in a Philippine prison. De Lima was arrested in 2017, just a few months after she launched a senate investigation into Duterte's anti-narcotics campaign during which thousands of users and dealers were killed, many by police or in mysterious circumstances. She has been in police detention ever since. A Philippine court in 2021 dismissed a drug case against de Lima, 63, while another court in May acquitted her from a charge that she received drug money from prison inmates.