In several European countries, residents and authorities are battling huge forest fires. In Portugal, a pilot pays for his mission with his life. One person is also killed in severe forest fires in Morocco.
A pilot died when a fire-fighting plane crashed while fighting the forest fires in Portugal. According to the Portuguese civil defense, the single-engine plane he was piloting crashed near the small town of Vila Nova de Foz Côa in northeastern Portugal on Friday while it was fighting forest fires in the Bragança district. According to official information on Friday, one person died in forest fires in Morocco.
Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa wrote on Twitter of "great dismay" at the pilot's death. According to civil protection, 900 firefighters are currently fighting a total of ten forest fires in Portugal. Since the beginning of the year, about a dozen houses and more than 30,000 hectares have burned down.
Forest fires are also currently raging in several Mediterranean countries. Thousands of firefighters fought the flames in Spain and France on Friday. Two people were killed in a helicopter crash while fighting fires in Greece on Thursday.
According to local authorities, the body of a person "with multiple burns" was found on Friday at one of the fires in the Larache region in northern Morocco, which is also plagued by severe forest fires. Because of the fires that broke out in remote forest areas, hundreds of families were evacuated and at least 2,000 hectares of forest were destroyed, according to official information. In the Tétouan region near the port city of Tangier, 60 houses went up in flames and around 100 livestock died.
Like several southern European countries, Morocco has been hit by exceptional heat, with temperatures approaching 45 degrees Celsius and severe drought.
