Wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest have hit a record number this year, with 72,843 fires detected so far by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, as concerns grow over right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro's environmental policy.
The surge marks an 83 percent increase over the same period of 2018, the agency said Tuesday, and is the highest since records began in 2013.
Since Thursday, INPE said satellite images spotted 9,507 new forest fires in the country, mostly in the Amazon basin, home to the world’s largest tropical forest and seen as vital to countering global warming.