US Satellite Images May Shed Light on Causes of Armenia Wildfire

YEREVAN (RFE/RL) ”“ Satellite images provided by the United States may help Armenia law-enforcement authorities identify the causes of a recent massive wildfire in a nature reserve southeast of Yerevan, Armenia’s Minister of Nature Protection Artsvik Minasyan said on Wednesday.

The fire in the Khosrov Forest State Reserve erupted on August 12 and raged for at least four days before being extinguished by Armenian emergency workers with the help of a Russian firefighting plane. It burned hundreds of hectares of woodland.

Minasyan said that his ministry asked relevant authorities in the U.S. to share aerial photographs of the mountainous area taken by American surveillance satellites.

“We received photographs taken on August 13, the morning after the fire erupted,”