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ALGIERS: Algeria’s state prosecutor on Thursday ordered an investigation after a mob lynched a man they accused of sparking the country’s deadly wildfires.
The North African country has been in the grip of devastating fires since Monday that have cost at least 69 lives.
Video footage posted online on Wednesday showed a crowd beating to death 38-year-old Jamal Ben Ismail and setting him ablaze.
They alleged he had started the fires.
The grisly murder was staged in Larbaa Nath Irathen, in the Tizi Ouzou district, one of the worst hit by the fires.
Those responsible “will receive a severe punishment,” the prosecutor said, adding that “odious crimes should not remain unpunished.”
Amnesty International called on authorities to investigate Ben Ismail’s death, which the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights branded as “barbaric and atrocious.”
“Scenes of the lynching and torching of the suspected arsonist — a young artist who had come to help put out the fires — are shocking,” the Algerian group said.
Ben Ismail’s father, quoted by local media, called for “calm” as he urged the authorities to “shed light” on his son’s death.
Blazes raged across northern Algeria on Thursday as the country observed a national day of mourning for dozens of people killed in the latest wildfires to sweep the Mediterranean.
Soldiers and civilian volunteers have joined firefighters on multiple fronts in the effort to extinguish the blazes that have been fanned by windy and tinder-dry conditions.
In Tizi Ouzou district, the area with the highest casualty toll, an AFP journalist reported entire sectors of forest going up in smoke.
Villagers forced to evacuate in order to escape the flames began trickling back to their homes, overwhelmed by the scale of the damage.
“I have nothing left. My workshop, my car, my flat. Even the tiles were destroyed,” one of them said.
But he said he had “managed to save his family,” while adding that “neighbors died or lost their relatives.”
Flags were flying at half-mast after President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared three days of national mourning starting from Thursday.