Brasilia: As concerns rise over right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro's environmental policy, wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest hit a record number this year, with 72,843 fires detected so far by Brazil's space research center INPE. There has been an 83 per cent increase over the same period in 2018, the agency said on Tuesday, and is the highest since records began in 2013.

INPE said since Thursday satellite images spotted 9,507 new forest fires in the country, mostly in the Amazon basin, home to the world's largest tropical forest seen as vital to countering global warming.