Spanish police arrest five over fatal fires

POLICE have arrested five men suspected of deliberately starting forest fires raging across north-western Spain that have killed three people.

The suspects were detained for questioning in the Galicia region, regional prosecutor Alvaro Garcia Ortiz said.

Yesterday 67 fires were still active across Galicia, fire department officials said. High, gusting winds were making it difficult to put out fires, an official said.

Most of the outbreaks had been near urban areas close to the coast, Mr Garcia Ortiz said.

Drought conditions that have prevailed for the last five years have made firefighting difficult, he said.

Galicia has suffered an average of 12,000 forest fires per year recently, he said. Nine out of 10 were started deliberately, with few arrests leading to prison sentences.

Many factors cause people to want to start forest fires, he said, including people wanting to rezone land for new homes or turn forest into grazing land.

One man was arrested in Cerdedo, a town in Pontevedra, after authorities acted on tips from local residents, the Galician regional government said.

Almost 12,355 acres have been charred in Galicia.

Seven wildfires also were reported on the other side of Spain in the north-east region of Catalonia, where high winds also hampered firefighting.

Forest fires in Spain and other Mediterranean countries char hundreds of thousands of acres every year. Spain’s national and regional governments agreed to step up vigilance after 17 people died in fires last summer.