ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Teams of firefighters from the Kurdistan Region’s capital of Erbil were requested to aid in extinguishing fires burning wheat and barley near Qayyarah in southern Nineveh on Wednesday, as farmlands continue to burn across northern Iraq.
Additionally to the east, hundreds of acres of farmland have been destroyed in accidental and deliberate fires in recent weeks in northern Iraq, with dozens of farmers in Kirkuk province battling two huge active fires Wednesday afternoon.
“The fires started this morning and until now which is 3 p.m., they have not been brought under control,” Khalil Sheikh Bezeni, one of the farmers in the Pirde (Altun Kupri) area north of Kirkuk, told Rudaw.
The fire has engulfed farmland in several villages in Pirde district with more than 400 dunams of farmland being destroyed. One dunam equals 2,500 square-meters in Iraq.
Shwan Abdulqadir, the director of Civil Defense Department for Erbil, told Rudaw on Wednesday evening that a firefighting brigade was dispatched to Nineveh after a request by the Mosul governor.
The units sent to Qayyarah include five fire trucks and 25 firemen. Sirwan Rozhbayani, the deputy governor of Mosul, said on Thursday the fire is under control; however, the firefighters from Erbil will remain in the area.
In Duhok's Simmel area, 50-80 dunams of farmland were burning on Wednesday night, Hussein Morad, a local activist, told Rudaw.
Also on Wednesday night in the villages of Paraniyan and Garasour in Makhmour district, there was also fire that burned 80 dunams of farmland, a security source told Rudaw. However, farmers and firefighters have controlled the blaze.
Additionally to the east, hundreds of acres of farmland have been destroyed in accidental and deliberate fires in recent weeks in northern Iraq, with dozens of farmers in Kirkuk province battling two huge active fires Wednesday afternoon.
“The fires started this morning and until now which is 3 p.m., they have not been brought under control,” Khalil Sheikh Bezeni, one of the farmers in the Pirde (Altun Kupri) area north of Kirkuk, told Rudaw.
The fire has engulfed farmland in several villages in Pirde district with more than 400 dunams of farmland being destroyed. One dunam equals 2,500 square-meters in Iraq.
Some of the fires have been blamed on the remnants of the Islamic State (ISIS). Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi has said some of the fires happen annually as temperatures soar in the arid country. Others appear to be as a result of ethnic tension between Arab and Kurds in and around Kirkuk province. The Yezidi homeland of Shingal, a district in northern Nineveh, has seen a number of serious fires in recent weeks.
Masoud Barzani, the leader of Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said in a statement last month that the burning of Kurdish farms in disputed areas and “the killing, hurting and injuring of Kurdish people in these areas has become a recent phenomenon, committed on daily basis.”
Firefighters from Iraq's Directorate of Civil Defense try to put out field fires in Shingal on June 5, 2019. Photo: Iraqi Civil Defense Directorate
“Since yesterday, nearly 2,000 dunams of wheat and barley has been destroyed in Hawija, Riyadh and the surrounding villages,” said Kawa Hassan, the media official at the Kirkuk’s mayoral office. “There is a plot against Kirkuk to destroy the harvest of wheat and barley and it is not only limited to the Kakai villages but the plot is against Kirkuk and the ethnic groups residing there.”
Several villages south of Kirkuk belong to the Kakai community, the followers of an ancient religion with roots in Zoroastrianism. ISIS, which sees the Kakais as apostates, has been blamed for some of the fires but ethnic tension in Kirkuk has been rife since the Iraqi federal forces took control of the disputed areas from the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces in October 2017.
Irrigation systems, worth thousands of dollars, have also been destroyed. “Our family has lost 150 dunams alone to fire which started at 14:00,” Kawa Kakakhan, a 29-year-old farmer from Qoche village in Sargaran near Pirde told Rudaw. “All the irrigation systems that we have had for several years are destroyed, we incurred nearly $100,000 in damage.”
In all of Iraq from May 8 to June 4, there were 236 incidents related to the burning of farmland, Nowas al-Dulaimi, a spokesperson with the Iraqi Civil Defense Directorate, told Rudaw English on Wednesday.
Some 20,730 dunams of farmland were burned, while more than 500,000 dunams of land were saved, according to the Iraqi directorate.
Update: 11:08 p.m.
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