Diana Ghazaryan, Saro Baghdasaryan

As yet, there has been no official statement as to what caused the wildfires that ravaged swaths of the Khosrov Forest State Reserve in Armenia.

The blazes started on August 12, and were only extinguished, for the most part four days later after a water tanker plane was sent from Russia.

There is also no official count as to the specific number of hectares destroyed.

Local environmental activists and NGOs claim that thousands of hectares were destroyed, while government officials refer to hundreds of hectares.

According to the State Forest Monitoring Center, satellite reconnaissance reveals that 683 hectares were burnt.

The Russian IL-62 tanker plane made seventeen passes over the reserve. It’s now up to units of the Ministry of Emergency Situations to conduct mopping-up operations.