Fires Destroy Thousands of Dunams of Agricultural Crops in Northern Hasaka Countryside
ARK News.. Large-scale fires swept across vast agricultural areas in Hasaka province, causing extensive losses to crops, particularly the strategic wheat harvest, as the harvesting season gets underway. Civil defense teams and local residents faced significant difficulties in containing the blazes due to strong winds, the presence of landmines, and dense dry vegetation.
A local source from the town of Zirgan in the northern Hasaka countryside told Welat TV on Friday, June 19, 2026, that the area witnessed major fires last evening and in the early hours of today.
The fires spread along the road connecting the towns of Til Tamr and Zirgan, consuming thousands of dunams of agricultural land, most of it planted with wheat, amid major challenges faced by residents and firefighting teams in bringing the flames under control.
The source added that the fires extended for more than ten kilometers, starting from the village of Maslata north of Til Tamr, passing through the villages of Sheikh Ali, Qibour al-Gharajna, Khirbat al-Sha’er, Til al-Ward, and al-Rubaiyat, and reaching the village of Harmala north of Zirgan.
Another source from the affected villages stated that the fires initially broke out in areas west of the earthen berm stretching from Til Tamr to Zirgan, which have been under the control of Turkey-backed armed factions since 2019. The source stressed that residents and civil defense teams made considerable efforts to limit the spread of the fires and prevent them from reaching residential areas. Firefighting crews succeeded in extinguishing the flames on Friday morning, although new fires later erupted in the villages of Umm Ashba, al-Asadiyah, al-Mubarakiya, and Khadraoui in the Zirgan countryside.
The fires were not limited to the Zirgan area. Other parts of Hasaka Province witnessed similar incidents during the past week, destroying thousands of dunams of farmland, including in the village of Himo west of Qamishlo; the villages of Malik and Ta’like in the Dirbasiye countryside; as well as rural areas around Til Brak, al-Shaddadi, and Abdul Aziz mountain.
In a related development, the Hasaka Directorate of Emergency and Disaster Management had previously designated a number of main and secondary forward-response points to deal with potential fires threatening agricultural crops. Approximately twenty such points have been established across various rural areas of the province.
It is worth noting that Hasaka province witnessed unprecedented large-scale fires during the 2019 and 2020 agricultural seasons, causing severe damage to thousands of hectares of farmland and inflicting major economic losses on farmers, who received no compensation.
101
