PARIS: Every few minutes, the mortuary owner’s phone rings. Since a record-smashing heat wave started taking lives and storage space for bodies in Paris and beyond, the funeral directors and mourning families calling him mostly have the same question: Do you have room for one more? With all 32 places in his cold room taken, Zouhaeir Hertelli reluctantly has to gently say “Non,” over and over and over again. “We’re facing a really catastrophic situation,” he said.

France is counting the human cost of its worst heatwave on record after health authorities reported about 1000 excess deaths within days, with elderly people accounting for the…

A record-breaking heat wave has overwhelmed mortuaries in Paris, leaving funeral directors struggling to find space for bodies.

'We're facing a really catastrophic situation,' said a mortuary owner

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