A 12-year-old boy started a bushfire and two teenage girls were questioned over another blaze in Queensland, Australia, police said yesterday as forest fires forced hundreds of people to flee from their homes.
This week, strong winds have fanned about 140 bushfires in northern Queensland and New South Wales (NSW), with flames ravaging thousands of hectares of land.
At least eight of the fires are suspicious, Queensland Police Commissioner Katrina Carroll told reporters, and police said they had questioned three children over blazes.
Photo: Reuters
The 12-year-old boy was questioned after a group of teenagers were found on Monday in bushland near a skate park in Brisbane, Queensland’s capital.
The boy deliberately lit a fire that spread to a nearby storage facility, destroying a fence, two shipping containers and their contents, police said.
The boy was processed through the state’s juvenile legal system, which meant that he was released with a caution, a police spokeswoman said.
Police were questioning two 14-year-old girls over a fire in bushland near the Gold Coast, the spokeswoman said.
“Some of the fires have involved children playing and obviously the consequences are dire as a result of that and ... some of them have been purposeful and malicious,” Carroll said. “People can die. Buildings and residences are being destroyed.”
In Queensland alone, low humidity levels, high winds and dry vegetation have fueled 85 fires that have destroyed or damaged 84 houses across the state, fire service officials said.
There were more than 400 people in evacuation centers, Acting Queensland Premier Jackie Trad told reporters, adding that there were no casualties.
“Apart from Sunshine Coast, we are still seeing fires right throughout the state,” she said.
In NSW, firefighters were battling about 55 fires and five properties had been confirmed destroyed, the NSW Rural Fire Service said on Monday.
Bushfires have started earlier than normal in the southern hemisphere this spring.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said that winds would intensify throughout the day yesterday, but that fire threats should abate today.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS