Twenty-eight cats at a family-run cattery have died in the wildfires on the Italian island of Sardinia. Volunteers from the National Board for Animal Protection (ENPA) tried to save them, but they arrived too late. The cats burnt to death. ENPA said that the owner of the cattery was in the hospital.
Over the weekend, fires raged across the province of Oristano in the central-western region of Sardinia because of a heatwave with over 4,000 hectares (9,880 acres) burnt.
“It is a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions that will have consequences for the next 15 years,” Giovanni Contini, the regional inspector at ENPA, said.
ENPA volunteers were able to save thirty dogs from burning alive at a shelter in the Cabras area of the Oristano province. Two dogs were missing but were found the next day hiding in an olive tree. They were unharmed.
The European Union has sent four forest firefighting planes to Sardinia in response to a request from Italy to help tame the fires.
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