FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta – A massive convoy was under way Friday to move evacuees stranded at oil field camps north of fire-ravaged Fort McMurray, Alberta, through the community to safe areas south of the Canadian oil sands capital
Police and military were overseeing the procession of an estimated 1,500 vehicles.
Meanwhile, a mass airlift of evacuees was expected to resume, a day after 8,000 people were flown out.
In all, more than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray, in the heart of Canada’ oil sands, and officials say no deaths or injuries related to the fire have been reported.
The Alberta provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said more than 1,100 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were fighting the fire, but Chad Morrison, Alberta’s manager of wildfire prevention, said rain is needed.
BEIRUT – Russian and Syrian officials denied Friday that their aircraft struck a camp for people displaced by fighting in an airstrike that killed 28 the previous evening. The denials came as activists said a coalition of rebels and militants, including Syria’s al-Qaida branch, seized a strategic village from pro-government forces near the contested city of Aleppo.
According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some 73 fighters 43 on the opposition side and 30 pro-government troops have died since Thursday afternoon in the battle for the village of Khan Touman. The advance signals a reemergence of a powerful, ultraconservative coalition on the opposition’s side in the Syria conflict.
ANKARA, Turkey – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at Europe on Friday, saying his nation will not reform its anti-terrorism legislation for the sake of visa-free travel to Europe for its citizens.
The EU has called on Turkey to revise its terrorism laws as a condition for allowing Turkish citizens to travel to Europe without visas on short stays.
Erdogan has been pressing for the contrary: a broader definition of terrorism at a time when the country is facing the twin threats of renewed conflict with Kurdish militants in the southeast and growing blowback from the conflict in Syria.
His statement came a day after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stepped down over a rift with the president.
Associated Press
