Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said that 19 people were injured in the forest fires that broke out yesterday afternoon in the Dacha resort area on the Aegean coast in the southwest of the country. hospitals.

In turn, the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry of Turkey, Vahid Kirishi, in a TV interview, indicated that “the fire destroyed about 500-600 hectares of forest”, explaining that “strong winds make it difficult to localize the fires, as the wind speed reached 60 meters per second on Wednesday evening , and at night it dropped to 30 meters per second.

Firefighting continued throughout the night, including with the use of helicopters equipped with night vision systems, but it was not possible to localize the fire. In the predawn hours, aviation joined in extinguishing the fire. The air group in the Dacha area includes 10 aircraft and more than 20 helicopters, and on extinguishing fires on the ground. An investigation is underway into the cause of the fire, which, according to preliminary information, could have arisen due to a short circuit at a transformer substation in the area.