KHABAROVSK, August 26 (Itar-Tass) - The air in Khabarovsk is filled with pungent smoke on Friday. The wind is bringing the suffocating smell of fume from a firing ground in the suburban Khabarovsk district where peat bogs have been ablaze for the second week.

“On the pictures taken from the outer space a large fire area at the firing ground is shown, but the military do not put out the fire and do not allow firefighters in the zone,” a duty officer of the Far Eastern forest protection airbase told Itar-Tass.

Twenty-five forest fires keep raging in the Far East on Friday, 21 fires are registered in the Khabarovsk territory, three in the Jewish autonomous area and one fire on Sakhalin, specialists of the airbase said. Two fires in hard-to-reach areas of the Solnechny district grew into big fires. 257 people are involved in the firefighting efforts.

As many as 1048 fires broke out in the federal district, 128.6 thousand hectares of forests and 81.3 thousand hectares of non-forest area burnt down since the beginning of the fire-prone season.