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A firefighter tries to extinguish a forest fire in the Serra de Bouro district of Leiria, north of Lisbon, Portugal.
At least 31 people have been killed in northern Portugal and Spain, where hundreds of wildfires have forced residents to flee from towns and villages.
Portugal’s national civil protection authority said 27 people had been killed in central and northern Portugal on Sunday and early on Monday; three people have been reported dead in Spain.
The death toll in Portugal, where a huge fire killed 64 people in June, is likely to rise. The government declared a state of emergency for regions north of the Tajo river after Sunday was described as “the worst day of the year in terms of forest fires” by civil protection spokeswoman Patricia Gaspar.
More than 6,000 firefighters were battling more than 500 wildfires on Sunday – the highest number of fires in a single day for more than 10 years. Portugal has asked for help from its European partners and Morocco.
Jorge Gomes, Portugal’s secretary of state of internal administration, said most of the fires, which have destroyed houses, factories and other infrastructure, had been set deliberately.
The bodies of two of the three victims in Spain, both women, were found by firemen inside a burnt-out car on a road in the north-western region of Galicia. The third, a man in his 70s, died as he tried to save his farm animals, media reported.
The fires were fanned by strong winds as remnants of Hurricane Ophelia brushed the Iberian coast. They spread quickly over the weekend across a landscape left tinder-dry by a hot summer.
Some blazes in Galicia remained out of control on Monday, authorities said. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the head of the regional government, said 15 of the fires were posing a risk to towns, and that 90% of forest fires each year in Galicia were started intentionally.
He told reporters: “All of Galicia is weeping this morning for our razed hills, but especially for the loss of human lives.”
Spain’s interior minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido, said some of those responsible had already been identified. They could face up to 20 years in jail if convicted, police said.
The country’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, who is from Galicia, said he was returning to the region to see the emergency co-ordination effort for himself. “I’m heading to Galicia,” he tweeted on Monday morning. “Solidarity from all of Spain and prompt coordination to combat the fire and assist people.
Schools were closed on Monday, while at least 20 planes joined 350 firefighting units in tackling the fires. Light rainfall early in the day was expected to help extinguish the flames.
Last week, an independent investigation into Portugal’s June wildfires found that authorities failed to evacuate villages in time. The fires destroyed about 29,000 hectares (72,000 acres) of land.
