China battles forest fire in northeast mountains

SHANGHAI, May 1 (Reuters) China was sending thousands of personnel to battle a forest fire across a 3 km front in its remote northeastern mountains today, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Nearly 1,000 firefighters had reached the scene of the blaze in the Great Xingan Mountains, near the Russian border in Heilongjiang Province, after the alarm was sounded yesterday.

The local meteorological bureau has forecast strong winds in the next few days, which could make controlling the fire difficult, Xinhua said.

A 1987 fire in the heavily forested Great Xingan Mountains, China's worst blaze in four decades, killed at least 200 people and destroyed some 1 million hectares of timberland in three weeks.

The State Forestry Administration said in January that China could face an ''extremely serious'' threat from forest fires this year because of global warming and the El Nino effect, which is caused by warming of Pacific waters off South America and can disrupt rainfall patterns.

REUTERS KD HT1624