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About 14,000 wildfires reported across Russia this year, says service

The Aerial Forest Protection Service reported that a wildfire season is still in place in 65 regions of the country

MOSCOW, October 10. /TASS/. About 14,000 wildfires have been reported across Russia this year, with the first one reported just a few days into 2019, the press service of the Aerial Forest Protection Service said on Thursday.

"This year, the season of wildfires in Russia started much earlier than usually. The first forest fire was reported in Primorye in the first days of January," the report said.

According to the service, there were eight forest fires engulfing an area of 113 hectares as of 00:00 on October 10. A wildfire season is still in place in 65 regions of the country.

Major wildfires began in Siberia in July, hitting hard-of-access areas of the Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk regions, Buryatia, the Trans-Baikal region and Yakutia. According to early figures from the Russian Federal Agency for Forestry, the damage from wildfires in 2019 has amounted to seven billion rubles ($108.570 million) against about 17 billion rubles ($263.840 million) last year.