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Field Fires in Syria's Hasakeh Kill 10
[AnNahar] Fires engulfing vital wheat fields across Syria's northeast have killed at least 10 people, a war monitor said Sunday, as Kurdish authorities claim the blazes were set deliberately.

Kurdish authorities and the Damascus regime are competing to buy up this year's harvest as fires -- some claimed by the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group -- continue to scorch crops in the country's breadbasket.

The victims included civilians and members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces who died while trying to extinguish the blazes since Saturday, the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The fires in the Kurdish-majority province of Hasakeh also maimed another five people, according to a front man for the Kurdish Red Islamic Thingy.

"The victims were trying to douse the blaze but they were trapped by the fire," Kamal Derbas said.

Kurdish officials have called on the US-led coalition to help extinguish blazes in the cereal and oil-rich region under their control.

"The largest fires have ravaged up to 350,000 hectares of land," head of the Kurdish agriculture authority Salman Baroudo told AFP.

He claimed the fires were "deliberate", saying they serve to "stir up strife between area residents and undermine the Kurdish administration" in the country's northeast.

He did not specify who he believed was behind the blazes.

The official state news agency SANA on Saturday blamed the field fires in Hasakeh on Kurdish-led forces.

It said they deliberately sparked a blaze to prevent local farmers from selling their crops to the government.

Analysts say wheat will be key to ensuring affordable bread prices and keeping the peace in various parts of the country in the coming period.

Farmers have separately blamed the fires on Dire Revenge attacks, sparks from low-quality fuel, and even carelessness.

SANA said Saturday that other field fires in the northwestern countryside of Hama province were sparked by jihadist artillery attacks.

Clashes in the area on Saturday between government forces and bandidos Death Eaters left dozens of combatants dead, including 26 pro-regime fighters, the Observatory said.
Posted by: trailing wife 2019-06-17
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=543504