Thousands forced to flee homes as wildfires rage across Europe

A series of wildfires have spread across southern Europe, forcing thousands to evacuate their homes.

Fires burning out of control in southern France have forced the evacuation of over 10,000 people from two dozen small towns and villages near the border with Spain.

The European Union said it was sending four waterbombing aircraft to France from Cyprus and Sweden, and more than 100 firefighters, to help emergency teams in Trevillach near the city of Perpignan.

Just over the border in Spain, fires ravaged across 2,200 hectares, 97 per cent of them in the protected natural area of Les Gavarres.

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Meanwhile, Portugal has suffered hundreds of blazes in the last few days, with the biggest already burning through 10,000 hectares of land, the size of around 14,000 football pitches.

The blaze has injured 16 people, including four firefighters, and scorched some 4,600 hectares in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, local prefect Pierre Regnault de la Mothe confirmed.

According to Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme, the fire was burning near the third stage of the annual cycling race, leading to its closure to the public to allow firefighters easy access to the area.

The stage, which is 196km (122 miles) long, began in the Spanish city of Granollers and ends in Les Angles, in the Pyrenees-Orientales region of France.

Mr Prudhomme confirmed the motorcade of vehicles that follows the race was also kept to a minimum.

In Spain's Catalonia region, where the first two stages of the race took place, wildfires have now been stabilised.

However, high temperatures and fumes could still complicate efforts to extinguish it.

That blaze, which broke out on Friday in Catalonia's Costa Brava, is thought to have been caused by a worker using a circular saw near a road, causing sparks that kindled and spread, local authorities said. The suspect was arrested on Friday.

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Large fires also destroyed hundreds of hectares of forest, vineyards and scrub on the Croatian island of Hvar and at Tale in Albania.

Meanwhile, in Greece, flames set off by a forest fire tore through two factories in the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Local authorities in Greece issued evacuation alerts for three suburbs and urged residents in parts of the coastal city to stay indoors.

In Athens, a large fire broke out on Sunday evening to the west of the Greek capital, with 210 firefighters deployed to tackle the blaze burning through pine forest in the Mandra area.

Tragedy struck last weekend as two boys aged eight and 10 from Bulgaria were found dead in a hot car in Cyprus.

Cyprus has beem experiencing temperatures of around 38C, which is not classified as a heatwave on the east Mediterranean island for the time of year.

Meanwhile, two cyclists, a 30-year-old and a 71-year-old, died while taking part in an event in the Poland Bike Marathon series in Marki near Warsaw last month.

According to scientists, the heatwave would have been "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change, which has made this week's soaring night-time temperatures 100 times more likely than they would have been just two decades ago

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