Wildfires continue to spread in parts of France, Spain and Italy as heatwave temperatures top 40C

Huge wildfires continue to rage through parts of France, Spain and Italy with hundreds of people being evacuated as temperatures topped 40C.

Around 6,000 firefighters, forest guards and civil protection officials were sent to to the southern Italian island of Sicily on Wednesday, where wildfires have been raging for several days.

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi confirmed a firefighter died after falling ill while battling the flames, while the head of the region, Renato Schifani, added that 50 fires were still raging. 

A spokesperson for the Italian Civil Protection Agency said the situation in Sicily was 'serious' and that the fires were 'being fuelled by very high temperatures and very dry soil'.

More than 160 fires have also been recorded in the neighbouring Calabria region which the head of local civil protection said were deliberate cases of arson by 'malicious individuals'.

Meanwhile, dangerous severe red heat alerts are in place in Spain, as authorities ordered the evacuation of several districts around the city of Toledo, just south of Madrid.

It comes less than two weeks after Spain suffered one of its deadliest wildfires in recent history when a blaze in the southern province of Almeria killed 13 people and destroyed around 7,000 hectares. 

Of the 13 people who died – ⁠including a 93-year-old British woman who perished from burn injuries in a hospital – ​seven were from the United Kingdom. 

Earlier today, Alerts were sent by telephone to residents of the districts surrounding Toledo because of the fire and several arterial roads were cut off, the Civil Guard said. 

Emergency services said that 'due to the progression' of the fire, three villages had been ordered evacuated and people in a fourth had been told to stay in their homes with doors and windows closed 'until further notice'.

In France, two raging fires displaced thousands of people and one ravaged over 1,000 hectares in the picturesque Arcachon Basin region near Bordeaux.

'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.

Le Porge's mayor Martial Zaninetti said the fire could have been started by a machine used to clear forest track but this is yet to be officially confirmed.

A blaze that raced through wooded hills in another part of southern France on Wednesday, forcing hundreds from their homes and devouring an area twice the size of London's Heathrow airport, was being contained earlier today, officials said.

The fire erupted Tuesday in the Var region and spread at an unexpectedly fast pace, forcing some 400 people to evacuate and devouring 2,550 hectares.

Nearly 1,000 firefighters and specialised water aircraft battled to contain the blaze in the region that lies along France's Mediterranean coast between the cities of Marseille and Nice.

In 2025, more than 393,000 hectares had been consumed by flames in Spain, according to the European Forest Fire Information System, the worst toll in the country's recent history.

The ⁠World Meteorological Organisation last month warned that the record temperatures that baked Western Europe for over a week in late June would worsen the risk ​of wildfires, ​given the ⁠outlook for sustained high temperatures, very low humidity and dry vegetation.

Spain's weather agency AEMET said the heatwave, the ‌third ⁠of 2026, was expected to last at least until Thursday, bringing temperatures above 40C across much of the southeastern interior and pushing wildfire danger to extreme levels.

Some areas could reach 42C to ​44C by ​Thursday as hot, ⁠dry air moves north from Africa.

The worst of the heat will be felt in Andalucia and the Region of Murcia, where temperatures could climb above 45C.

Some weather models are even predicting 46C to 47C in parts of Murcia on Thursday, with Spanish newspapers calling it ‘the mother of all heatwaves'.

The agency also warned of possible dry thunderstorms in mountainous areas of ​eastern Spain.

Spain is already the European Union's most fire-affected ​country ⁠this year.

According to the EU's Copernicus wildfire monitoring service, 104,423 hectares had burned across Spain in 2026, compared with 41,781 hectares in France.