A wildfire burning out of control in southern France has forced the evacuation of over 10,000 people from two dozen small towns and villages near the Spanish border, and officials said strong winds would further fan the flames.
The European Union said on Monday it was sending four waterbombing aircraft to France from Cyprus and Sweden, and more than 100 firefighters, to help emergency teams in Trevillach near the city of Perpignan.
Aircraft drops fire retardant over a wildfire raging in the southern France department of Pyrenees-Orientales. Photo: Jean-Christophe Milhet/AFP via Getty Images
“Europe stands with France,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X.
Alors que des incendies ravagent le sud de la France, l’Europe se mobilise.
Nous avons déployé quatre avions bombardiers d’eau de notre flotte RescEU.
Ils arriveront aujourd’hui même depuis Chypre et la Suède pour renforcer les pompiers français autour de Perpignan.
L’Europe…
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 6, 2026
The blaze has injured 16 people, including four firefighters, and scorched some 4,600 hectares in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, local prefect Pierre Regnault de la Mothe said in a post on X.
Early summer heatwaves in France and across western Europe in May and June have parched vast areas of land, making them particularly vulnerable to wildfires this year.
Photo: Jean-Christophe Milhet/AFP via Getty Images
The Trevillach blaze was burning near the third stage of the Tour de France, leading to its closure to the public on Monday to allow firefighters easy access to the area, according to Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme.
The motorcade of vehicles that follows the race was also kept to a minimum, he said. The stage, which is 196 km long, began in the Spanish city of Granollers and ended in Les Angles, in the Pyrenees-Orientales region of France.
Europe is warming at more than twice the global average, the World Meteorological Organisation has said, making prolonged heat episodes increasingly likely.
World
Wildfires rage in Portugal, Spain and Greece as authorities warn of toxic smoke
Temperatures are forecast to once again hit 40 degrees Celsius in southwest France this week, with Portugal and Spain also baking under another heatwave, but are unlikely to reach the record highs seen in June.
Police have arrested an employee of a company contracted by Catalonia’s regional government who is suspected of having sparked the wildfire by using an angle grinder at the side of a road.
South of Catalonia, in the eastern Castellon province, 500 people were evacuated after a wildfire entered the Sierra de Espadan national park, home to a significant cork oak forest.
Portugal has suffered hundreds of blazes in the last few days, with the biggest already burning through 10,000 hectares of land, the size of around 14,000 football pitches. – Reuters
