Algeria: 12 Killed in Wildfires, 154 Fires in One Day
At least 12 people have died and 54 were injured in wildfires that swept northeastern Algeria during a heat wave also affecting neighboring Tunisia. Authorities recorded 154 fires in a single day.
While the Balkans spend this summer counting their own fires and sending crews across borders to help neighbors, a disaster of a different scale has been unfolding in North Africa, largely unnoticed at home. Algeria reported 12 dead and 54 injured over Wednesday and Thursday in a wave of wildfires, and the 154 fires recorded in a single day point to the same pattern of heat and drought that has gripped the whole Mediterranean this August, from the Iberian Peninsula to the Balkans.
Interior Minister Said Sayoud told reporters that the deaths were recorded across three provinces in the country’s northeast. “Five people died in Jijel province, four in Bejaia and three in Tizi Ouzou province,” Sayoud said. According to a local radio station cited by Arab News, the dead in Bejaia include an eight-year-old boy and a 22-year-old woman.
Sayoud made the statement while visiting a hospital in the town of Souk El Tenine, in Bejaia province, where he toured the wards alongside Health Minister Mohamed Seddik Ait Messaoudene to see the injured. According to the official APS news agency, 54 people are being treated at that hospital for burns and smoke inhalation, six of them in serious condition.
How Many Fires Are Active
Algeria’s Civil Protection agency counted 69 active fires nationwide as of 8 p.m. local time on Wednesday. Bejaia province, about 300 kilometers northeast of the capital, Algiers, was hit hardest, with 36 fires breaking out there, 18 of which had been brought under control by the time Sayoud spoke. In neighboring Jijel, fire had spread across 12 municipalities, with 18 active blazes.
Firefighting crews, according to the minister, managed to bring fires under control in the provinces of Skikda, El Tarf, Bouira, Tizi Ouzou and Tebessa. The Gendarmerie closed three major national highways because of the fires, near Bejaia, Jijel and Setif, while Civil Protection said it had deployed significant resources to fight the blazes, which strong winds have made harder to contain.
Dozens of families have been evacuated from the worst-hit areas. Footage from the regional outlet Jijel News, picked up by both Al Jazeera and Arab News, shows residents taking shelter from thick smoke inside a post office building.
Why This Summer
Wildfires are nothing new in northern Algeria during the summer months, but this year’s wave fits a broader pattern. According to figures reported by Arab News, citing official sources, Algeria recorded nearly 2,000 fires nationwide in July 2026 alone. In late July, more than 100 people in Annaba province temporarily left their homes as fire damaged nearly 150 houses. Official investigations after such events often end in arrests over suspected arson, and four people from Constantine province were held in custody over the July fires.
The heat wave that hit Algeria this week has also struck neighboring Tunisia, confirming that this is not an isolated local event but a regional heat surge across the southern Mediterranean. Algeria has paid a heavy price in similar summers before: wildfires in July 2023, which raged in and around Bejaia, killed more than 30 people and destroyed thousands of hectares of forest, farmland and hundreds of homes.
Unlike European countries facing similar crises, Algeria rarely receives help from foreign firefighting crews or water-bomber aircraft from neighboring states, leaving the firefighting effort largely dependent on its own Civil Protection resources. With active fires still being counted in Bejaia and Jijel, the week’s final toll, and the number of houses left standing, will only be known once the fires actually stop.
