MOSCOW, June 5 /TASS/. More than 60 forest fires continue raging in Russia on an area of 17,600 hectares - a considerable number of them in Buryatia, the Avialesokhrana air forest protection service said.

The agency reported last Saturday that 69 forest fires were burning in Russia on a territory of 20,200 hectares, most of them also in Buryatia.

"Sixty-one forest fires were registered on a total area of 17,617 hectares … on June 5. Sixty-eight forest fires have been liquidated in Russia on a total area of 5,103 hectares over the past 24 hours," the agency said.

At present, 17 forest fires are raging in Buryatia. Their area exceeded 11,000 hectares; another 14 fires are burning in the Trans-Baikal region on an area 5,800 hectares.

More seats of fires have been registered in the woods of the Amur, Irkutsk and Sverdlovsk regions, the Krasnoyarsk territory, etc.

The state of emergency has been announced in three parts of Russia - Buryatia, the Trans-Baikal territory and one region in Kamchatka, the Russian Far East. Almost 500 parachute firefighters and paratroopers have been mobilized to extinguish the fires.