Grassland fires from Mongolia threatened to spread across the border to China, spurring local Chinese authorities to dispatch teams to intercept them to avert a major blaze, Chinese state media reported on Monday.

Using satellite remote sensing monitoring, officials at the Forest and Grassland Fire Prevention headquarters of Hulunbuir in China found fires outside the borders of two of the city’s counties – the New Barag Left and Right Banners.

As of 8:20 a.m. (0020 GMT), the nearest fires could be seen amid swirls of dust about 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) away from China, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported. However, the report said no important facilities or residents were around.

After discovering the fire, Hulunbuir Forest and Grassland Fire Prevention dispatched 202 guards, including 82 forest fire brigades, to intercept the front line of the border.

In addition, the Xilingol League south of Hulunbuir on the Chinese side reported a fire 20 km away from the Sino-Mongolian border early Monday morning, viewed through satellite cloud image monitoring.

Mongolia shares a border with China’s Gansu province and the Chinese regions of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.

The fires menacing the vast Chinese Inner Mongolia region come as several parts of China have faced severe dust storms and unseasonally dry weather.