At least six people have died in wildfires that have swept across several Algerian provinces in recent days, the interior ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry offered condolences and said it had instructed local governors to begin a full inventory of losses to compensate victims, based on reports from provincial committees conducting field investigations.

In neighbouring Morocco, the National Agency for Water and Forests (ANEF) reported 310 forest fires from 1 January to 20 July, a 32% increase in ignitions compared to the decadal average, but a 30% decline in total area burned to 1,850 hectares. The agency attributed the rise in fire starts to heavy winter rains that produced dense herbaceous growth, followed by heatwaves in late May and early July that dried the vegetation. Rapid detection and coordinated intervention by multiple agencies, it said, contained most blazes before they spread.

Across the Atlantic, Brazil recorded 12.7 million hectares burned in 2025, a 31% drop from the historical average and nearly half the area affected in 2024, according to the MapBiomas annual fire report. The Amazon biome saw its smallest burned area in 41 years of satellite monitoring, at 3.1 million hectares, after a record 15.8 million hectares in 2024. Researchers attributed the decline partly to a delayed rainy season that limited the window for agricultural burning, and to a reduction in deforestation. However, the Cerrado savanna remained the most affected biome, with 8.7 million hectares burned.

In Europe, France has already seen more than 42,000 hectares burned by mid-July, the highest in 20 years of European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) measurements, surpassing the previous record set in 2022. Fires in the south and near Paris this month have pushed the total well above the full-year figure for 2025. Italy also faced significant fires, with blazes in Calabria's Pollino National Park and in Sardinia, where early damage estimates reached €10 million, according to agricultural association Coldiretti.

Algerian civil protection services said on Tuesday that 42 fires were still active across 14 provinces, with aircraft deployed in Béjaïa and Annaba. The interior ministry praised the 'exceptional courage' of firefighters, soldiers, and volunteers. No cause has been officially determined for the Algerian fires, and investigations are ongoing. The provisional death toll remains six, with authorities warning that the situation could evolve as firefighting continues.