A fire in an orphanage in the suburbs of Algiers killed at least 11 people, including several children, on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, while the country, faced with a heatwave, recorded nearly a thousand fire outbreaks in a week.
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The fire broke out at the assisted childhood establishment, located in the commune of Mohammadia. The emergency services intervened around 3 a.m.
On Thursday, black traces of smoke could be seen on the white walls around the windows of the building, according to an AFP journalist on site.
Firefighters had to use a chainsaw to remove a metal grill around a window, a witness said.
“Around 3 a.m., we heard the firefighters arriving with the cries of children. We helped as best we could, but unfortunately we were told that there were 11 dead,” Abdessalam Merrah, 41, who lives near the orphanage, told AFP. This report was confirmed by civil protection.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who is visiting Germany, presented his condolences and deplored the death of “several children” in the fire, according to the official APS agency.
Its prime minister, Sifi Ghrieb, went to the bedside of the wounded at the Zeralda burns hospital, in the suburbs of Algiers, then to that of Mustapha-Bacha, in the capital, according to national television.
The causes of the disaster are not yet known.
Professor Rachid Belhadj, head of the forensic medicine department at Mustapha-Bacha hospital, said on television that some bodies were completely charred.
He specified that DNA analyzes would be carried out and that the identification operation would take several days.
932 fire outbreaks
Several regions of Algeria have been facing an exceptional heatwave for several days, mainly in the north of the country.
A 59-year-old municipal agent died while participating in firefighting operations, the mayor of Beni Mouhli, in the wilaya of Sétif (north-east), announced Wednesday, cited by local media.
In one week, from July 8 to 15, the Civil Protection services recorded 932 fires, “of which 913 were extinguished until Wednesday morning,” the deputy director of operations, Lieutenant-Colonel Karim Harbi, told the official Algérie Presse Service (APS) agency.
Civil protection said it had mobilized more than 19,000 agents and more than 700 trucks and intervention machines dedicated to fighting forest fires, as well as six helicopters and 12 water bomber planes.
As a preventive measure, it also evacuated some of the inhabitants to safe places, notably in the wilayas of Béjaïa, Guelma, Bouira and Mila, again according to the APS.
Every summer, northern Algeria is affected by forest fires, a phenomenon worsened by episodes of drought and extreme heat, favored by climate change.
In recent years, large fires have caused the deaths of dozens of people, destroyed thousands of hectares of forests and agricultural land as well as many homes. According to the authorities, some of these fires were started deliberately, and suspects were arrested.
