While Algerian civil protection teams managed to extinguish massive fires in the east of the country early Wednesday, Interior Minister Said Sayoud announced the opening of investigations to uncover the backgrounds and causes of the raging fires, which claimed the lives of six people, according to an official toll, and forced thousands to evacuate their homes after the flames reached them.

Since the beginning of summer, Algeria has faced an unprecedented wave of fires in terms of their geographical spread, bordering on an "absolute catastrophe" according to firefighters, particularly in the forested municipality of Seraidi in the uplands of Annaba province (600 km northeast of the capital), where many cases of suffocation were recorded, and thousands of hectares of green spaces were charred and turned to ash.

The forested city of Seraidi fire in eastern Algeria (Civil Protection)

Civil protection personnel fought a major battle against the flames on Tuesday night, which did not stop until the early hours of dawn, amid complex conditions imposed by a severe heatwave and strong winds that blew across several regions, with temperatures reaching 55 degrees Celsius at the fire sites in Bejaia province (250 km east). Whenever a fire was extinguished after strenuous efforts, other hotspots flared up, placing the national firefighting apparatus under immense pressure, according to civil protection officials.

The Ministers of Interior and Solidarity at the Annaba hospital where fire victims were transferred (Ministry of Interior)

The dispersion of fires complicates interventions

The dispersion of fire hotspots across about thirty northern provinces further complicated the situation, preventing civil protection units from providing support and assistance to the hardest-hit areas. Faced with this sharp increase in forest fires, authorities and media are hinting at the possibility that the fires may or may not have a criminal background.

Interior Minister Said Sayoud and Minister of National Solidarity Soraya Mouloudji visited the "El Mountazah" hotel in Annaba to check on the living conditions of many patients who were evacuated from the Seraidi Functional Rehabilitation Hospital, which is located in the middle of the burning forest. They also inspected the care arrangements for families preventively evacuated from several neighborhoods and areas in Seraidi municipality that were threatened by the advancing flames; these families were directed to the "Elite Athletes Complex Center".

Firefighters battling the Seraidi forest fire (Civil Protection)

During this visit, the Interior Minister announced two main measures in press statements: the first is the state's pledge to compensate those affected by these fires, noting that 150 homes were damaged by the flames in Seraidi alone. The second announcement included "continuing security investigations to determine the exact causes behind the outbreak of these fires."

The minister explained that 160 fires have been recorded since the end of last weekend in the northern provinces, affirming that "security services' investigations are ongoing to determine whether these fires resulted from a criminal act or due to natural factors."

In the latest field data, civil protection recorded 170 fires across 19 provinces on Tuesday alone, with firefighters managing to extinguish 104 of them, while efforts continued to control another 66 hotspots. Overall, the number of forest fires recorded in Algeria since July 8 has reached 1,555.

Government management flaws

The fires sparked reactions in political circles, as the head of the "National Building Movement" party (presidential majority), Abdelkader Bengrine, appealed in a statement on Wednesday to individuals residing near the burning forests to stay away from them, and to "facilitate the tasks of field teams, while fully responding to the directives issued by official services and authorities, and ensuring that information is obtained exclusively from its trusted and institutional sources, to deny an opportunity to create confusion for parties that always try to exploit such difficult circumstances for their vile purposes. We also call for the highest degrees of vigilance and national awareness."

The Interior Minister with army officials in Annaba in eastern the country where the fires reached the outskirts of the city (Ministry of Interior)

Although Bengrine did not name those "parties" specifically, his remarks allude to social media accounts previously described by authorities as "unknown," asserting that "their owners publish rumors and fake news about the fires to stir up panic."

Regarding these fires, Ahmed Muhaigiba, an Algerian researcher at the Canadian Meteorological Center, wrote on his social media account: "Algeria's forest area ranges between 2 and 4 million hectares depending on the adopted statistical criteria, not exceeding 1 percent of the country's total area, given the desert nature that covers more than 80 percent of the national territory. Although most of these forest areas are concentrated in the northern strip and are in direct proximity to road networks, villages, and residential complexes—which complicates firefighting operations—this location grants an advantage for early detection, rapid intervention, and preventive planning to reduce losses."

Residents of a village in eastern Algeria whose homes were reached by the fires (activist accounts)

Muhaigiba added, explaining that the problem is not that fires break out, "but that the state does not seem to be building, after each crisis, a more advanced system than the one before it... After the 2021 fires, what changed radically? After 2022, what institutional reforms were accomplished? After the 2023 fires, were independent evaluation reports issued? And were their results translated into new policies?"; he continued, emphasizing that: "When disasters repeat in the same manner, this is an indicator of a flaw in governance rather than in nature."