Cuba registered 421 forest fires in 2012 and nearly 90 percent of them were sparked by human negligence, official newspaper Juventud Rebelde reported Tuesday.

Fires ravaged over 3,468 hectares of land last year, the paper quoted the country's Ranger Corps as saying, adding that reckless actions of hunters, smokers and operators of agricultural machinery or other equipment without spark safeguards were the main forms of human negligence.

More than 70 percent of the fires in 2012 did not spread over five hectares, which indicated that the rangers had become more efficient in containing fires, said Raul Gonzalez Rodriguez, chief of the corps.

He added that most of these fires occurred in the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Matanzas, Villa Clara, Camaguey and Holguin and the special municipality of Isle of Youth. Endi

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