Progress made in battle against giant wildfires: Moscow

Half of the wildfires in Russia's far east region are either extinguished or under control, Moscow-based Itar-Tass News Agency quoted an Emergencies Ministry spokesman as saying Sunday, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

According to the spokesman, 338 fires have been put out in an area of 145 square kilometers and 273 fires of 426 square kilometers have been contained.

The emergency ministry said earlier Sunday that forest fires had engulfed more than 1,140 square kilometers across 14 regions, mobilizing almost 240,000 emergency workers, along with 2,000 members of the armed forces.

In the Voronezh region, one of the worst-hit, almost 600 people were left homeless, Russian television reported. Residents were shown being evacuated to a hotel with bags of clothes being brought in by volunteers.

"It was impossible to go out into the street," said Galina Shibanova, who was moving into a cramped hotel with 148 other residents. "There was a lot of smoke, and the children were choking. We covered their mouths with cloths and handkerchiefs and quickly put them in the car."

An elderly resident, Vera Sakharova, complained that firefighters had come too late.

"We did not have any help," she said. "We had to do everything ourselves."

Speaking with regional governors, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the situation "extremely tense" and berated officials for their tardy response, saying, "Not everything was done in a timely way, but now is not the time to squabble."

In an earlier broadcast from Sochi, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called the situation a "natural disaster of the kind that probably only happens every 30 or 40 years."

The fires unleashed by Russia's worst heat wave have devastated central regions of the country, and along the Volga river basin, to the east and southeast of Moscow.

Agencies