BOGOTA, Feb 6, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Forest fires that have raged for days in
Colombia's Amazon on Saturday put its Andean capital, Bogota, on an
environmental alert as bad air quality spanned an area the size of greater
Paris, authorities said.

   Wind carried smoke from several fires blamed on armed groups some 350
kilometers (220 miles) to the northwest, all the way to the Colombian
capital.

   Bogota Mayor Claudia Lopez said on Twitter that more than half of the
capital's air quality monitoring stations have been off the charts for the
past 48 hours.

   "That is why, as an environmental protection measure" the city has issued
an environmental alert, she wrote.

   Lopez urged her city's eight million people to refrain from physical
activities outdoors in the coming days.

   Authorities have blamed the fires on former rebels who did not accept the
2016 peace deal with the government, saying that that they burn trees to
raise cattle on the land.

   In the central province of Guaviare, governor Haydeer Palacio, declared a
"red alert" due to forest fires that have engulfed 10,000 hectares of land,
an area similar to the total area of the French capital.

   January of this year was the hottest month in the Colombian Amazon in a
decade, also leading to an increase in forest fires in the southeastern
region and very likely impacting air quality in the capital, according to an
Environment Ministry report seen by AFP Friday.