Hundreds of new fires broke out Sunday in Russian forests and fields that have been dried to a crisp by drought and record heat. Firefighters brought some of the wildfires raging around cities under control. The wildfires that began threatening much of western Russia last week have killed 28 people and destroyed or damaged 77 towns or villages, the Emergencies Ministry said. Thousands of people have been evacuated from areas in the path of flames, but no deaths have been recorded since late Wednesday. Army troops and volunteers have joined more than 22,000 firefighters in combating the fires, which blazed just outside Moscow and in several provinces east and south of the capital. The region around Voronezh, a city of 850,000 people about 300 miles (475 kilometers) south of Moscow, was one of the worst hit. Half of the 300 homes in the village of Maslovka were reduced to cinders. Of the 774 fires burning Sunday, 369 had started in the past 24 hours. More than 300,000 acres were ablaze, including in the regions around Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's fifth-largest city, and the city of Ryazan, just southeast of Moscow. The fires also were intensifying in regions farther to the east such as Mordovia and Tatarstan. Smokey air has settled over cities, already baking in the heat, and many residents complain of headaches and intestinal ailments. In Moscow, the smog has come mainly from fires in dried-up peat bogs in outlying regions. The peat, which is high in carbon, can ignite and smolder underground, giving off dangerous fumes.
