Wildfires burning in Russia

MOSCOW, June 7 (UPI) -- Some 234 wildfires were burning Tuesday in forests and peat bogs in remote parts of Siberia and the Urals, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said.

The Federal Forest Service said the number of fires increased from only 30 on Monday, the official Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.

The worst hit regions were the Sakha Republic, the Amur Region, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and the Irkutsk region.

The fires cover more than 1.5 million acres, three times the size of last year's drought-triggered wildfires that claimed 62 lives and prompted Russia to place a ban on grain exports.