Hundreds of firefighters battled raging wildfires in northern Portugal and Spain on Wednesday, as the flames disrupted an international train route and sparked the evacuation of a village.

Firefighters and police backed by water-dropping aircraft battled several wildfires in northern Portugal as strong winds hampered their task, reigniting some blazes that had been under control, the civil protection agency said.

An international train route used by passengers travelling from the coast of Portugal to France was cut off by a fire for several hours, operators said.

Some 250 firefighters backed by five water-dropping helicopters and planes had fought to control the fire which threatened the railroad.

One fire raging in the natural park of Douro in northwest Portugal crossed the border into Spain, leading to the evacuation of a village.

Residential areas in Portugal are not threatened by the fires, which have taken place in forest areas, the civil protection agency said.

Firefighters had brought several of the fires under control by late Wednesday but more than 150 of them were still battling two blazes near Spain.

But authorities in neighbouring Spain said they had ordered residents to leave the village of La Bouza, Salamanca, as flames approached the area.

Earlier on Wednesday, more than 300 Spanish firefighters and soldiers, backed by 17 aircraft, were fighting a wildfire that has destroyed some 5000 hectares in the northern region of Aragon, officials said.

Strong winds and scorching temperatures have made the fire, which erupted on Tuesday for unknown reasons inside a military training camp at San Gregorio near Zaragoza, difficult to control, the Aragon government said.

Firefighting efforts were complicated by the risk that weapons in the camp could explode from the heat and this was restricting the movement of ground forces, it added in a statement.

Between 1 January and 9 August wildfires have ravaged 84 064 hectares of land in Spain, more than during all of last year and the highest amount in the past decade, figures released on Wednesday by the environment ministry showed.

More than half of the fire damage this year was in northeastern Spain.

The blazes have claimed eight lives, including six firefighters, since last month.

Last week Greenpeace warned that heat waves and drier land caused by climate change have combined with "land use changes, abandonment of rural areas and a lack of management of forest areas" to make forests "more flammable, leading to ever larger and more uncontrollable fires."

In Portugal, fires destroyed nearly 24 000 hectares of land between 1 January and 15 August, around 7000 hectares more than all of last year.

Dozens of fires have been erupting every day since the start of summer in Portugal, but most are quickly brought under control. On Tuesday alone, firefighters put out 176 forest fires, according to the civil protection agency.

AFP

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