About 3,800 people have been deployed to fight forest fires raging in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, local authorities said on Thursday.

Firefighters have been struggling to put out two new fires and an another ongoing fire in forest farms in the Bilar River area of the Greater Hinggan Mountains, the region's forestry administration said.

The current damage is unclear.

The administration said the fires were caused by the remains of other blazes for creating firebreaks. Strong winds led to their re-ignition.

The region's forests have been at a high fire risk due to little rainfall and high temperatures in the spring.

On April 9, about 3,900 firefighters finally extinguished forest fires that had been raging in the Greater Hinggan Mountains for nearly five days with the help of cloud-seeding efforts.

(Xinhua News Agency April 18, 2008)