Europe faces wildfires spurred by high temperatures and tinder-dry conditions due to a historically hot summer that has already contributed to the deaths of thousands of people.
Two people died and hundreds were evacuated from popular beaches when two fires broke out on the Greek island of Salamina near Athens, the fire department said.
“Over 570 people were evacuated on coast guard patrol boats and other vessels,” a coastguard spokeswoman told AFP.
A Spanish soldier died while helping efforts to extinguish a major wildfire in Aragon, the northeastern region’s leader said, as the authorities deployed the largest firefighting arsenal in the region’s history.
French reinforcements were due to help contain the wildfire, which broke out on Monday and has threatened a 1,000-year-old monastery.
In Portugal, hundreds of firefighters were battling a series of blazes there. At one near the border with Spain, near the village of Dine, five firefighters sustained minor injuries when their vehicle caught fire, local media reported.
Firefighters were battling several other fires near the Spanish border, including at Boticas and Chavez, said the civil protection agency ANEPC.
Meanwhile, water-dropping aircraft and farmers’ tractors helped firefighters battling Belgium’s largest modern-day wildfire at an inaccessible area near Germany, where a border town ordered a partial evacuation because of the growing threat.
Military helicopters backed by tractors on the ground hauled water to help firefighters tame Belgium’s largest modern-day wildfire, burning in a hard-to-access nature reserve.
The blaze – whose origins are still unknown – has grown from 80 hectares burnt on Friday to nearly 3,000 hectares on Sunday.
And in Croatia, police said they had arrested four people suspected of starting some of the wildfires that have swept parts of the Adriatic coast in recent days.
The four are suspected of setting fires that scorched pine forests and olive groves as Croatia battles a wave of blazes fuelled by drought and heat. (AFP)
