Two people died when fire swept a Greek island near Athens and a Spanish soldier was killed fighting flames in Aragon, as firefighters across Belgium, Portugal, France and Croatia battled a fresh wave of blazes over the weekend — the latest toll in a European summer that has already produced record-breaking heat, historic evacuations and thousands of heat-related deaths.
Two dead on Salamis as evacuees flee by sea
Fire crews in Greece confirmed the deaths of two people after two separate blazes broke out Sunday on Salamis (Salamina), an island a short ferry ride from Athens that is popular with day-trippers from the capital. More than 570 people were evacuated by coast guard patrol boats and other vessels as flames, driven by strong winds, tore through pine forest in the Peristeria area and reached homes near the coast, a coast guard spokeswoman told AFP.
Greek broadcaster ERT reported the two bodies, believed to be a married couple, were found near where the Peristeria fire ignited. A second blaze at Kaki Vigla prompted the rescue of an elderly man and left nine people with burns requiring treatment at the Salamis Health Center. Some 146 firefighters, backed by volunteers, four water-dropping aircraft and six helicopters, were deployed to the island. The deaths bring Greece’s wildfire toll for the summer to eight, according to ERT.
Spanish soldier killed as Aragon deploys record firefighting force
In Spain, a member of the army’s Military Emergencies Unit (UME) died Sunday when his truck plunged into the Atares ravine near Mount Oroel while responding to the Peñas de Riglos wildfire in Huesca province, Aragon. Three colleagues in the vehicle were taken to hospital with injuries of varying severity. The UME said it mourned the loss “with deep pain,” and Aragon’s regional president, Jorge Azcón, offered condolences to the unit and the soldier’s family.
The fire, which broke out more than a week ago, has burned upward of 16,000 hectares and forced more than 1,000 people from 18 to 19 villages to evacuate. Aragon has mobilized what officials describe as the largest firefighting deployment in the region’s history — roughly 1,000 personnel and up to 40 aircraft — with 100 French reinforcements arriving to help contain a blaze that has repeatedly threatened the twin monasteries of San Juan de la Peña. The older of the two monasteries, whose origins trace to the 10th century and which legend links to the Holy Grail, holds the remains of the first kings of the medieval Kingdom of Aragon; those relics, along with ceremonial items linked to the 18th-century statesman the Count of Aranda, were evacuated to the Huesca Museum on Thursday as flames closed in. Aragon’s government said Sunday that crews had made progress overnight consolidating containment lines around the fire’s perimeter.
Elsewhere in Spain, authorities in Andalusia declared a separate wildfire under control Sunday after ten days and more than 25,000 hectares burned, allowing over 400 evacuees to return home.
Portugal battles a string of border fires
Hundreds of firefighters in Portugal remained engaged with multiple blazes near the Spanish frontier. Near the village of Dine, five firefighters sustained minor injuries when their vehicle caught fire, according to local media. Crews were also contending with fires around Boticas and Chaves, close to the Spanish border, Portugal’s civil protection agency ANEPC said — an area that has seen repeated flare-ups through the summer as the country’s northern interior has borne the brunt of this year’s fire season.
Belgium’s largest modern wildfire creeps toward Germany
The most dramatic front remained the blaze burning through the High Fens (Hautes Fagnes) nature reserve in Belgium’s Liège province, now confirmed as the country’s largest wildfire in modern history, surpassing a 2011 fire that burned roughly 14 square kilometers of the same reserve. Having broken out Friday, the fire has expanded rapidly through boggy peatland and pine forest, growing from around 80 hectares that day to close to 3,000 hectares — nearly 30 square kilometers — by Sunday.
About 600 residents of the municipalities of Waimes and Bütgenbach were told to evacuate Saturday as winds shifted and smoke blanketed the area; the Belgian settlement of Küchelscheid was also emptied. Across the frontier, the German town of Monschau — population 12,000 — recommended that residents near the border leave affected zones because of expected heavy smoke, even though the fire’s front, roughly 1.5 kilometers from the border at its closest, was not expected to cross into German territory. More than 250 emergency personnel from Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have been deployed, joined by EU-coordinated reinforcements including Dutch and Czech helicopters and Swedish water bombers, alongside military helicopters and local farmers using tractors to haul water. Wallonia’s provincial governor, Hervé Jamar, said Sunday that overnight winds had shifted several times but no houses had burned; local fire commanders cautioned the blaze was still not fully under control given the reserve’s difficult, boggy terrain.
Croatia makes arson arrests as fire season turns criminal
Croatian police in Zadar County arrested four people late Friday after a tip from residents about suspicious behavior in the Benkovac area; investigators are examining their possible connection to a series of fires in the county, including a major blaze near Brbinj on the island of Dugi Otok. The arrests follow a punishing week for Croatian firefighters, who battled a fast-moving fire that killed one person and injured dozens near Omiš earlier in the week — among the worst in the country’s recent history — and come amid a broader pattern of suspected arson across the continent: French authorities say they have detained nearly 500 people, including 183 minors, on suspicion of starting fires since the beginning of July.
France’s Landes fire stabilizes as temperatures ease
In southwestern France, a fire that has burned around 1,700 hectares in the Landes department — the third major blaze to hit the Landes de Gascogne forest this summer — was reported stabilizing after three days of ground and air operations. Local prefect Gilles Clavreul said the situation was developing “favourably” as temperatures fell from around 40°C when the fire broke out Thursday to a forecast 28°C on Sunday afternoon, with humidity rising to help crews. A first group among the roughly 650 people evacuated was cleared to return home Sunday evening, though authorities cautioned that full containment work remained ahead.
A summer of records
The individual fires are unfolding against a backdrop of one of the most severe wildfire seasons Europe has recorded in years. According to the EU’s Joint Research Centre and the Copernicus-backed European Forest Fire Information System, the area burned across the bloc had reached roughly 567,000 hectares by mid-August — below the pace of 2025, the worst year on record, but well above the 243,000-hectare average of the past two decades. Forecasters warned that “very extreme” fire danger conditions stretched across a broad swath of central and eastern Europe, from Germany through Poland and into the Balkans. France and Spain have each recorded their worst wildfire years since 2012, while Italy and Portugal are experiencing among their worst seasons in fifteen years.
The fires have burned alongside a summer of extreme and repeated heatwaves that have taken a severe human toll. Data from the European mortality monitoring network EuroMOMO indicated more than 10,000 excess deaths across the continent during the late-June heatwave alone, more than 9,000 of them among people 65 and older; France’s national public health agency recorded at least 5,764 excess deaths that week, a level it said was the highest since the deadly 2003 heatwave. Scientists studying the pattern point to Europe’s status as the world’s fastest-warming continent, heating at more than twice the global average, as the underlying driver of both the extreme heat and the tinder-dry conditions fueling this summer’s fires.
