Severe forest fires were burning in Russia's Siberian provinces with firefighters battling blazes in isolated mountain or steppe terrain, Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations (RMES) said in a Friday statement. Two regions - the Yakutia province and districts near the Amur River in Russia's Far East - were the hardest hit, according to RMES satellite imagery. According to dpa, more than 7,000 firefighters had deployed to sometimes extremely remote regions to battle more than 450 blazes currently burning in tundra, forest, and plains terrain. The fires covered an aggregate area of 66,000 square hectares, or 660 square kilometers, the Interfax news agency reported. Most of the fires been ignited by lightning and at present no areas of human settlement appeared threatened by flames, according to the report.
