By Aisha Maikudi Abdulkadir
Two firefighters have been killed in Spain and Portugal, the authorities said on Monday, as wildfires ravage the Iberian peninsula during a sweltering heatwave.
Both victims died in road accidents, taking the death toll to two in Portugal and four in Spain since the fires broke out in recent weeks.
Spain is in the grips of a third week of heatwave alerts, with the emergency services, backed by specialist army units, battling fires in the northwest and west of the country.
Neighbouring Portugal has also been trying to put out fires across the country, and both nations have appealed to the European Union for assistance.
The regional government in Castile and Leon, northwestern Spain, wrote on X that one firefighter was killed when his truck flipped over on a steep forest road.
“For an unknown reason, the vehicle approached the embankment and overturned, falling down a steep slope,” it added.
Fires across Spain have destroyed more than 70,000 hectares (173,000 acres) of land in recent days — just under half of the total so far this year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis).
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visited one of the affected regions on Sunday and promised “a national pact” to deal with the climate emergency.
Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said in a statement that a firefighter died on Sunday and two of his colleagues were seriously injured.
The latest fatality comes after a former mayor in Guarda, eastern Portugal, died while fighting a fire on Friday.
On Monday morning, around 2,000 firefighters were deployed across northern and central Portugal, with about half mobilised to try to douse flames in the town of Arganil.
Portugal, which has seen nearly 185,000 hectares of land destroyed since the start of the year, is expecting the arrival of two water-bombing aircraft to help firefighting teams on the ground.
The devastation is already bigger than the 136,000 hectares destroyed last year, according to provisional data from the country’s forestry institute.
The Iberian peninsula has been particularly affected by a succession of heatwaves and droughts, fuelling forest fires. Experts attribute the increase in temperatures to climate change.
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