Opposition MP Najat Aoun Saliba tweeted Sunday morning about  “an environmental crime” in which more than 1,000 perennial pine trees were cut down in Mayfouq-Byblos under the pretext of forest slitting, a practice under which most or almost all the trees in an area are cut down to allow new growth.

Saliba Aoun said that through this felling process “they took the tree trunks and left the ground bare as a fuel for forest fires.”

Many regions in Lebanon are wildfire-prone, affected by the summer’s high temperatures, dry conditions, and illegal tree cutting. Fires have ravaged villages and ecosystems in their path in previous years. Civil Defense teams and volunteer groups have been responding to extinguish fires, but suffer from a chronic lack of equipment as the country struggles to cope with a now three-year-old economic collapse.