Eleven wildfires continue to be active in Kosovo
Express newspaper
12/08/2025 22:13
The Kosovo Emergency Management Agency has announced that in the last 12 hours, 72 fires have been registered, of which 11 continue to be active, while 61 others have been localized.
“The most serious situation is in the Municipality of Kamenica, in the villages of Tugjevc and Gmicë,” the agency said in a Facebook post.
She said that she had also requested the assistance of the NATO mission in Kosovo, KFOR, to extinguish the fire in the village of Gmicë.
Kosovo and the entire Balkan region are facing temperatures around 40 degrees Celsius this week.
The Ministry of Health in Kosovo has recommended that public and private institutions implement measures to protect workers from extreme heat.
“High temperatures negatively affect human health, especially the most sensitive groups of society, such as children, the elderly, pregnant women, people with chronic diseases, as well as workers who work in open environments or in working conditions with high temperatures,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty team visited the village of Kçiq in Mitrovica on Tuesday to see up close the damage caused by the fires in that area.
Some residents have expressed great concern, saying they have lost everything they had.
The situation with fires is also worsening in neighboring countries.
In Montenegro, one soldier was reported dead and another injured as a result of the overturning of a tanker truck that was being used to extinguish fires in the Kuca region near Podgorica, the Ministry of Defense has announced.
According to authorities, the military, in cooperation with the authorities, is conducting investigations into the incident.
Climate scientists have said several times that several decades of greenhouse gas emissions have caused global temperatures to rise.
The world has warmed by 1.1 degrees Celsius compared to the industrial era, while countries aim to keep it below 1.5 degrees Celsius, to avoid major natural disasters. /REL