Wildfires Rage In Armenia
Narine Ghalechian
Azatutyun.am
Rescue workers battle a wildfire in Gegharkunik province, November 24,2025.
Hundreds of firefighters joined by police officers and ordinary people battled on Tuesday major wildfires that raged across Armenia amid unusually high temperatures.
The fires were first reported over the weekend at mountain pastures around the village of Tetujur in the country’s eastern Gegharkunik province. They burned up to 80 hectares of grassland before being mostly extinguished on Monday, according to the Armenian Interior Ministry.
Fires also broke out in other parts of Gegharkunik as well as five other Armenian provinces in recent days. The potentially most dangerous of them burned in and around wooded areas in the northeastern Tavush province.
Flames raged on Tuesday just a few kilometers from the Tavush village of Navur whose residents joined rescuers in trying to contain them. The village chief, Mher Nigoyan, said the fire “made some progress” despite those efforts.
“The weather is very warm right now, and it’s difficult to put out a fire in these conditions,” Nigoyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Authorities did not plan to evacuate this or other communities. They claimed to have put out the flames in a number of other areas.
The Interior Ministry spokesman, Narek Sargsian, said a total of 1,830 firefighters, police officers and forestry workers are battling what appear to be Armenia’s worst wildfires in years. He said they are being helped by an Armenian army helicopter dropping water on burning grassland and forests.
The ministry did not explicitly comment on the main cause of the fires. But it did release a video urging village residents not to burn dry grass, plants or leaves.
