A fire sparked by an “imbecilic” military exercise threatened the outskirts of France’s second city on Thursday and a fifth firefighter died in Spain as blazes hit several areas of Europe.
Two people also died on the Italian island of Sardinia, while wildfires raged in Greece.
The foreign legion instructor who ordered the shooting exercise in France was suspended and taken into custody. Though nobody was killed, one fireman suffered burns and four rescuers were treated for smoke inhalation as the blaze ripped through 1,300 hectares of brush and damaged homes in the suburbs of Marseille.
PHOTO: AFP
The fire erupted on Wednesday after troops from the 1st Foreign Legion Regiment used tracer rounds, which contain an incendiary substance to make them visible in flight, during a practice session at their base.
The blaze was contained by dawn on Thursday, but this did little to calm local officials, who noted that this was the second time in as many years that the army had started a wildfire.
Local prefect Michel Sappin, the French government’s senior regional official and police chief, blasted the “imbecilic” actions of the military.
The officer who ordered the exercise — a 43-year-old from the island of Reunion — was taken into judicial custody after being suspended from his duties, a source close to the case said.
Fresh back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, he told investigators he was not informed that tracer rounds were viewed as a fire hazard in the region and was “devastated” by the damage, the source said.
Visiting the fire-ravaged area on Thursday, Prime Minister Francois Fillon promised tough punishment for those responsible, as well as a review of French military rules on shooting exercises.
Separately on the island of Corsica, two villages near the southern city of Ajaccio were evacuated on Thursday after wildfires raced through 3,000 hectares of tinder-dry forest.
Water-dropping planes were sent to help firefighters contain the blaze, which cut the main road between Ajaccio and Bastia, toppled telephone poles and filled the air with thick black smoke.
In Spain, a 47-year-old fireman was killed in the Aragon region when the vehicle he was driving fell into a ravine, a statement from the local government said.
He was the fifth firefighter to die this week, after four of his colleagues perished in the neighboring region of Catalonia on Tuesday.
Six fires in the northeast province of Teruel, in Aragon, remained out of control, having burned more than 8,000 hectares of forest and brush, the regional government said.
More than 500 firefighters and members of the security forces sought to bring the blazes under control, having evacuated more than 1,500 people from their homes, officials said.
In Italy, two people were killed as wildfires burned on the island of Sardinia, while authorities evacuated homes and a beach because of approaching flames, officials said.
Several fires also broke out in Greece, mainly in the southern Peloponnese and on the island of Evia, destroying forests and farms.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion