Wildfires blaze in Siberia, Far East

Russian emergency workers fought wildfires burning Sunday on more than 550 square kilometres of territory mostly in Siberia and the Far East. The state agency responsible for fighting forest fires, Avialesookhrana, said the largest blaze was in the far northeast’s Sakha Republic, where 34,000 hectares were on fire. The Irkutsk region in Siberia had fires encompassing about 20,000 hectares, the agency said. There were no immediate reports of deaths or residential damage in the sparsely populated regions.