Five people died and nine were hospitalized after a major forest fire in eastern Ukraine, authorities said on Tuesday. The fire started on Monday in the Lugansk region, part of which is in the hands of the pro-Russian separatists, and has spread over more than 80 hectares, the State Emergency Situations Service said in a statement.
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First localized, the fire intensified considerably on Tuesday morning due to gusts of wind and temperatures of 38 ° C affecting the village of Smolianynové. More than 120 homes were burnt to the ground in the area, some 20 km from the front line, the statement said.
About 350 firefighters and rescuers were deployed to the scene, added the Ukrainian presidency, which said that the head of state Volodymyr Zelensky summoned the Minister of the Interior and several other officials for a meeting on the subject.
In spring, unprecedented forest fires devastated more than 66,000 hectares this year in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl power plant (northern Ukraine), the scene in 1986 of the worst nuclear disaster in history.