BARCELONA: Hundreds of firefighters battled forest infernos in France, Spain and Portugal on Sunday as temperatures rose again in heatwave-scarred Europe.
The latest wildfires have already devastated more than 17,000 hectares of land — twice the size of Manhattan — across the three countries where temperatures in some places were predicted to touch 40C on Sunday.
Authorities registered thousands of excess deaths during one of Europe's worst heatwaves in June, and with more extreme weather on the way, France's Interior Minister Laurent Nunez has already expressed concern that the annual summer wildfire season had started a month early.
A fire near Spain's northeastern Costa Brava coast burned more than 2,200 hectares in two days and firefighters said their operation on Sunday would be "complicated" by rising temperatures and the many "smoking hotspots" within the fire's perimeter.
Firefighters "worked tirelessly throughout the night to consolidate the perimeter of the La Bisbal d'Empordà forest fire, which is now stabilized," said a Catalunya fire service statement.
