Morocco wildfires kill 2 women, toll rises to 4

LARACHE: Two women died in forest fires in a region of northern Morocco that had already been ravaged by wildfires this month, authorities said on Tuesday.

The latest deaths, from smoke inhalation, took to four the number of people killed in wildfires that have hit Larache province since mid-july.

The two women “did not respond to calls from local authorities to evacuate homes threatened by the fires,” the authorities said.

On Monday, a volunteer firefighter died and another was injured in a forest blaze in the northern province of Tanouate, near Fez and Meknes.

Another fatality caused by fire occurred in Larache province in mid-july.

Forest fires have devastated thousands of hectares of land this month, and forced the evacuation of 536 families from 11 villages since Monday.

Morocco, which is experiencing severe drought, has been hit by heatwaves over the past month.

Scientists say human-induced climate change is amplifying extreme weather, with global warming leading to increased risks of heatwaves, drought and forest fires.

Separately, Morocco’s navy intercepted more than 350 illegal migrants, including four children, in waters off its coast, a military official said on Tuesday.

The 359 people rescued between Saturday and Monday had been “aboard makeshit boats, kayaks or swimming” in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, the unnamed official said, quoted by MAP news agency.

Mainly from sub-saharan Africa, the migrants, who also included 10 women, received first aid aboard navy vessels before being transported to the nearest Moroccan ports, according to the same source.

Moroccan authorities on Monday retrieved the bodies of eight migrants off the southern shores of the North African kingdom.

Their inflatable boat sank near the coastal town of Akhfennir in Tarfaya province as it tried to reach Spain’s Canary Islands, the officials said.

Another 18 migrants, most of them African, survived and were detained for questioning, they added.

Morocco is a key transit point on routes taken by migrants seeking beter lives in Europe.

Last month, at least 23 people died trying to climb border fences into the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast.

Rights groups say at least 37 migrants died, a toll higher than the official figure.

It was the worst recorded death toll in years of atempts by migrants to enter Ceuta and Melilla, the two main land borders between Africa and the European Union.