Wildfires caused by arsonists or thunderstorms and fanned by a heatwave and strong winds have wreaked destruction across southern Europe, burning homes and forcing thousands of residents and tourists to flee.
Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006, according to the EU Science Hub's Joint Research Centre.
Flames and dark smoke billowed over a cement factory that was set alight by a wildfire that swept through olive groves and forests and disrupted rail traffic on the outskirts of the Greek city of Patras, west of Athens.
"What does it look like? It looks like doomsday. May God help us and help the people here," said a volunteer who had come from Athens to Patras to help.
Authorities ordered residents of a town of about 7,700 people near Patras to evacuate and issued new alerts, advising residents of two nearby villages to leave.
On the Greek islands of Chios, in the east, and Cephalonia, in the west, both popular with tourists, authorities told people to move to safety as fires spread.
Volunteer firefighter dies as wildfires rage across Spain
In Spain, a volunteer firefighter died from severe burns and several people were hospitalised as state weather agency AEMET warned that almost all of the country was at extreme or very high risk of fire.
The 35-year-old man had been attempting to create firebreaks near the town of Nogarejas, in the central Castile and Leon region, when he was trapped in the blaze, regional officials said.
He was the sixth person to die this year in wildfires in Spain. Others include two firefighters in Tarragona and Avila, according to emergency services.
Working in unprepared landscapes puts firefighters' lives at risk, said Alexander Held, a senior expert in fire management at the European Forest Institute, adding authorities should prepare by creating buffer zones and clearing combustible vegetation.
"Take an industrial building and imagine there would be no fire detectors, no sprinkler systems, no fire protection doors and no escape routes – firefighters would just refuse to go in, but in our landscape we expect them to do this," Mr Held said.
Investing €1 billion a year in forest management could save 9.9 million hectares - an area the size of Portugal - and €99bn spent on fighting fires and restoration work afterwards, according to Greenpeace.
Spain is seeking help from its European allies to tackle the wildfires, the country's interior minister said.
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Suspected arson
Spanish Environment Minister Sara Aagesen told the SER radio station that many fires across the country were thought to be the work of arsonists due to their "virulence".
A male firefighter was arrested for fires started in the Avila area north of Madrid two weeks ago, while police said that they were investigating a 63-year-old woman for allegedly starting fires in Galicia's Muxia area.
Police have also identified a suspect who is believed to have suffered burns to his hands after starting a small fire in a beachfront development in the southern coastal Cadiz area, Europa Press reported.
Thunderstorms have caused other fires.
On Tuesday, shortly after 5pm, Andalusia's fire department was flooded with calls by residents reporting a fire caused by a lightning strike on a chestnut and oak forest in Los Romeros, north of the city of Huelva.
The fire prompted the evacuation of around 250 residents but was largely controlled by Wednesday morning.
A blaze in Trancoso in Portugal that has been burning since last Saturday got worse during the night as a lightning reignited an area that was thought safe, the civil protection service said.
In Albania, Defence Minister Pirro Vengu said it was a "critical week", with several major wildfires burning across the country.
Some 10,000 firefighters, soldiers and police emergency units struggled with a total of 24 wildfires, the defence ministry said.
Flames reached two villages in the centre of the country, forcing villagers to flee, taking their livestock with them.
"We are going in the middle of two rivers because the fire has arrived," said one man from Narte, who fled with his wife taking a cow, a donkey and a dog.
"We can't do anything, it is like gunpowder."
Spain was in its tenth day of a heatwave that peaked on Tuesday with temperatures as high as 45C, and which AEMET expected to last until Monday, making it one of the longest on record.
Pope Leo moved his weekly audience from St. Peter's Square to an indoor venue in the Vatican, "to stay a little bit out of the sun and the extreme heat" as Italy's health ministry issued extreme heat warnings for 16 cities on Wednesday, with temperatures forecast to peak at 39C in Florence.
European satellite to step up monitoring of extreme weather
Separately, the Ariane 6 rocket blasted off this morning carrying Europe's next generation satellite for warning against extreme weather events.
The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) said its MetOp-SGA1 satellite will give "earlier warnings to help protect lives and property from extreme weather".
"Metop-SGA1 observations will help meteorologists improve short- and medium-term weather models that can save lives by enabling early warnings of storms, heatwaves, and other disasters, and help farmers to protect crops, grid operators to manage energy supply, and pilots and sailors to navigate safely," the agency added.
The rocket carrying the four-tonne satellite took off from France's Kourou space base in French Guyana. MetOp-SGA1 was to be put into an 800km high orbit.
It will be Europe's first contribution to a US-led programme, the Joint Polar System, putting up satellites orbiting between the north and south poles.
The six monitoring instruments on the satellite are twice as precise as the agency's existing satellite, IASI. It will monitor ocean and land temperatures, water vapour and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the amount of desert dust and cloud cover.
The lift-off was the third by Ariane 6 since its inaugural flight in July last year.
The Ariane company said that it had 32 launches planned from Kourou in coming years and that it was aiming to carry out nine or ten launches each year.
