Spanish firefighters battle a new blaze front near Valencia, forcing at least 15,000 people to evacuate.
MADRID: Spanish firefighters on Sunday battled a new front of fires near the coastal city of Valencia, where at least 15,000 people were evacuated.
Spain has already evacuated tens of thousands of people from villages west of the capital Madrid, where extremely dry conditions have been worsened by heatwaves and strong winds.
In the Valencia region, on Spain’s eastern coast, authorities said they were struggling to contain the fires.
“The fire is beyond our capacity to extinguish; it has a perimeter of about 21 kilometres (13 miles). It is still difficult to determine the number of hectares burned,” Juanfran Perez Llorca, Valencia regional president, told reporters late Saturday.
“We have evacuated around 15,000 people.”
Spanish authorities also ordered new evacuations on Saturday around Toledo, southwest of Madrid, describing the situation as complex with wind gusts pushing the blaze southward.
Fires in southwest France have forced 250,000 people to flee homes and campsites, one of the country’s biggest-ever peacetime evacuations.
Around 60,000 have already been evacuated from around Madrid, where Portuguese, Italian and other firefighting planes are helping Spanish teams on the ground.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said firefighters were working to save lives. One person has been reported killed by a separate fire in the east of Spain.
