Wildfires ravage Spain, France and Italy, killing three firefighters Wildfires swept across southern Europe on Wednesday, killing three firefighters and forcing thousands of people to evacuate as extreme heat and dry conditions fuelled blazes in Sicily, southwestern France and central Spain. Rescue teams battled dozens of fires amid warnings over increasingly severe weather events. Wildfires raged on Wednesday in Sicily, southwestern France and central Spain, claiming the lives of three firefighters and prompting thousands of evacuations.

Temperatures topped 40C and gusts of hot wind fanned the flames on the southern Italian island, where wildfires have been raging for several days. Around 6,000 firefighters, forest guards and civil protection officials were deployed to battle the flames with the help of water-bombing aircraft, regional head Renato Schifani said, adding that 50 fires were still burning. Scientists agree that climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels is making extreme weather events such as fires and heatwaves more likely and more severe.

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said a firefighter died after falling ill while battling the flames. A spokesperson for the Italian Civil Protection Agency told AFP the situation in Sicily was "serious" and that the fires were "being fuelled by very high temperatures and very dry soil". To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.

One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. More than 160 fires have also been recorded in neighbouring Calabria, which the head of local civil protection said were deliberate cases of arson by "malicious individuals" who had, among other things, tied rags soaked in flammable liquid to the tails of stray cats to spread fires.

In France, two firefighters died on Tuesday while tackling a blaze that broke out near Bordeaux airport. France's Interior Minister Laurent Nunez met the firefighters' families on Wednesday, as unions warned workers were facing "exhaustion" and a lack of resources. Two raging fires displaced thousands of people in the country's southwest, with one ravaging more than 1,400 hectares (nearly 3,500 acres) in the picturesque Arcachon Basin region near Bordeaux.

"We're dealing with a very dense stand of closely packed pines," firefighter Captain Wilfried Schneider told AFP, describing a fire of "rare" intensity. To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading.

To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Big black cloud "We saw a big cloud of black smoke spread across the sky in the middle of the afternoon," said Julie Leonard, a Bordeaux resident in her thirties who came with her family to the affected Le Porge area but was in a spot not under threat. "If I'd been brave, I would have stayed in my cabin, but it was too hot.

I got in my car and left," said Bernard Roche, 75, who has lived in the area for 35 years.