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A child and three men have died, and thousands have been forced from their homes as wildfires fuelled by a heatwave scorch southern Europe.
A four-year-old Romanian boy died of heatstroke in Italy on Monday, days after being found unconscious in his family’s car on the island of Sardinia.
On Tuesday, an employee of a Spanish equestrian centre died from his injuries in a suburb north of Madrid, officials said — reportedly as he tried to save horses.
Later, officials in Castile and Leon in northwestern Spain confirmed another man had been killed while fighting fires.
In Montenegro, a soldier also died, and another was seriously injured when their water tanker overturned while fighting wildfires in the hills north of the capital, Podgorica.
‘A significantly warmer world’
Heat alerts were issued in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and the Balkans, with temperatures expected to soar above 40C, and experts say the heatwave is another sign of climate change, which is fuelling longer, more intense and increasingly frequent bouts of extreme heat.
“Thanks to climate change, we now live in a significantly warmer world,” Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the meteorology department in England’s University of Reading told the Agence France-Presse news agency, adding that “many still underestimate the danger”.
Thousands forced from their homes
Hundreds of residents of Tres Cantos, near the Spanish capital Madrid, fled from the fast-moving blaze, which was contained on Tuesday morning.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on X that rescue services were “working tirelessly to extinguish the fires.”
Elsewhere, about 2,000 people were evacuated from hotels and homes near the popular beaches of Tarifa in Andalusia, southern Spain.
In Castile and Leon, dozens of blazes were reported, including one threatening Las Medulas, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its ancient Roman gold mines.
In neighbouring Portugal, firefighters battled three large wildfires, with the most serious near Trancoso in the centre of the country, where 700 firefighters were deployed.
