Sawt Falasteen - Thousands flee wildfires in France, Spain

In France, fires scorching through dense pine forests near the prized wine region of Bordeaux forced hundreds to flee the upscale Cap Ferret peninsula in the middle of the summer holiday season, as the blaze devoured an area nearly twice the size of Manhattan.

Several blazes were also raging out of control less than 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Madrid, with some residents of the Spanish capital waking up to the smell of smoke.

Two fires west of the city were on the verge of merging and "becoming a single blaze advancing towards Navas del Rey," a town some 50 kilometres from Madrid's outskirts, said Francisco Martin, a senior local official.

Thick acrid smoke billowed into the sky as a wall of fire crept along parched earth, according to aerial images by Spanish authorities.

Fanned by wind and scorching temperatures topping 40C in some areas, the blazes have killed three firefighters and forced the evacuation of some 50,000 people in the two countries.

"The smoke was incredibly thick. You couldn't breathe," Jose Cobos, who fled his home some 50 kilometres southwest of Madrid with his wife and three dogs, told Antena 3 television as he waited anxiously to learn if his house was still standing.

French authorities have ordered thousands of tourists on the southwestern Atlantic coast out of campsites and holiday homes, as firefighters backed by water-bombing planes raced to control the blazes.

More than 40,000 people have been evacuated in the region so far.

- EU help -

Both France and Spain have appealed to the European Union for help, with Madrid requesting four specialised planes on Friday, a day after Paris asked Brussels for more resources.

The European Union said it was deploying four planes to Spain and three to France to help fight the blazes.

"We are living through a dramatic situation, not only in various Spanish provinces but also in regions of neighbouring countries," Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on X, saying the government "has deployed all available resources".

In Spain, the government declared a state of emergency in the Madrid region, where more than 10,000 people have been evacuated in recent days, including more than 400 elderly and people with disabilities whisked away from several care homes.

"Meteorological conditions, fundamentally the wind, will complicate firefighting operations this Friday," the Madrid regional government said in a post on X.

France's southeast was also being hard hit, with Interior Minister Laurent Nunez saying that 32 fires of various intensity were raging across the country.

"We have passed the threshold of 50,000 hectares that have burnt since January 1 of this year," an area nearly five times the size of Paris, said Nunez, adding that the figure was nearly three times that of last year.

One firefighter has died after falling ill while battling the flames in Sicily, the interior minister said.

Two firefighters died on Tuesday tackling another blaze near Bordeaux airport.

- 'No chance' -

The total area of land burnt so far this year in EU countries is the second largest on record, according to satellite data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

Spanish civil protection chief Virginia Barcones warned on Spanish radio that some fires have become so intense that, despite the deployment of aircraft and ground crews, firefighters stand "no chance".

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W.Mansour--SF-PST