The United Nations deployed teams to the Syrian coast on Monday as wildfires spread across Latakia province for the fifth day.
Adam Abdelmoula, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Syria, said the fires sweeping through Latakia have “forced hundreds of families to flee their homes, while vast tracts of agricultural land and vital infrastructure have been destroyed.”
Abdelmoua said U.N. personnel are “conducting urgent assessments to determine the scale of the disaster and to identify the most immediate humanitarian needs.”
Syrian Minister of Emergency and Disaster Management Raed al-Saleh said the fires have wiped out at least 10,000 hectares of forest, wiping out “hundreds of thousands of trees.”
“The magnitude of the fires cannot be described. When there is no wind, we suppress them
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