Rio de Janeiro • Rocked by global outrage and threats of economic losses over its handling of fires raging in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil on Saturday began a hastily planned military operation to battle the blazes and generate a “positive perception” of the country.
As of Saturday, at least four Brazilian states had formally requested military assistance to contain hundreds of fires, which have been burning for several weeks but plunged President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration into crisis mode only this past week after photographs began circulating widely.
Military officials said they had deployed two C-130 cargo planes equipped with firefighting tools to the state of Rondônia and were assessing how many of the nearly 44,000 troops based in the Amazon area to mobilize.