Fires in Europe: latest developments

Here are the main developments related to the wildfires raging in Spain and France on Saturday:

'We will rebuild'

France's President Emmanuel Macron vowed the damage from the fires would not last, posting on X: "We will rebuild, we will repair and we will be there for as long as is needed."

One dead in Spain

A wildfire in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia killed one person before firefighters brought it under control, authorities there said.

'Grave situation'

The threat to the southwestern French department of Gironde "remains very serious", said top regional official Sophia Brocas.

"We are still facing a grave situation," she added, but the blaze has lost "some of its intensity".

Tonnes of help

A military transport plane deployed by the French government on Saturday to help fight wildfires carried out its first mission in the southwest of the country, AFP journalists saw.

The A400M military aircraft, equipped with a dispensing kit that can release 20 tonnes of water or fire retardant, flew over a forest in Lacanau in southwestern France.

France sends 500 more troops

France's government ordered 500 more soldiers to the wildfire zone in the southwest, bringing the total number deployed to 1,500.

The troops will assist with evacuating residents from areas threatened by the fires and help safeguard homes left unattended during the emergency, the defence ministry said.

Tour de France affected

Tour de France organisers announced that they were shortening the following day's final stage of the cycling race due to the wildfires ravaging southwest France.

"In a spirit of national solidarity with the areas and communities affected, it was decided to adapt the route for the final stage from Thoiry to Paris," organisers ASO said in a statement.

More than 250,000 evacuated

The wildfires have forced the evacuation of more than 250,000 people in total, authorities in both countries said.

The French government said 197,000 people were evacuated because of wildfires near Bordeaux.

Spain's interior ministry said 60,000 people had been evacuated from villages west of Madrid. Officials had earlier given a higher estimate of 70,000.

Record area burnt in France

Fires across France have burned nearly 98,000 hectares (242,163 acres), Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said, describing the total as a "historic record".

"There are still a number of fires across the country that have not yet been brought under control," he said, singling out major blazes in the southwestern departments of Gironde and Landes.

'Save lives': Sanchez

The priority is "to save your lives and protect inhabited areas", Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told reporters while visiting a village in the fire zone.

"We are going to have some complex hours ahead because although the temperatures have gone down, we do not know exactly how the wind will develop, how strong it will be."

25,000 hectares burned

Wildfires raging west of Madrid have burned up to 25,000 hectares, more than twice the surface area of the city of Paris, the Spanish interior ministry said.

Flames have ravaged nearly 10,000 hectares in the Madrid region and "between 13,000 and 15,000" in the neighbouring province of Avila, the ministry said in a message sent to journalists.

Paris sends 100 firefighters

Around 100 Paris firefighters were being deployed to southwest France to help battle raging wildfires, the head of the Paris Fire Brigade told AFP.

Arnaud de Cacqueray, commander of the Paris Fire Brigade, said the firefighters would primarily be involved in wildfire suppression operations.

Spain fire 'decreased'

The government delegation in Madrid said on X early Saturday that overnight conditions had helped the fight against the wildfires, "which advanced little and decreased in intensity".

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