At least 10,000 people fled homes and hotels in south-east France yesterday as wildfires swept through more than 6,000 hectares, including several villages surrounding Saint-Tropez.

More than 900 firefighters and 120 gendarmes were working to put out the fire, which was still not under control yesterday.

At least two firefighters were reported injured in blazes, which have been fuelled by strong winds that reached more than 65kmh.

“Thousands of people have been evacuated as a precaution but there are no victims,” said Delphine Vienco, a fire service spokesman.

“The fire is still not contained and it can resume at any time, especially if the wind picks up,” Evence Richard, a local representative, told BFMTV.

French President Emmanuel Macron thanked firefighters for tackling the blaze.

He added: “Climate disturbances will lead to more such fires.”

Although the cause of the fire is still unknown, experts said they suspected “human error” was at play.

Dominique Lain, the mayor of Luc, where the fires began, said: “The fire started at a rest stop near the freeway... which tells us that human error is at the centre of this.”

Nicola Butler, a British holidaymaker, said that she woke up in the night to smoke surrounding her accomodation in Cavalaire-Sur-Mer, near Saint-Tropez, before she was forced to leave.

“It was quite scary because when it’s dark you can’t actually tell how close the fire is, especially when the air is full of smoke,” she said.

Meanwhile in Greece hundreds of firefighters backed by water-dropping planes were battling a large forest fire burning for the second day yesterday that has led to the evacuation of a care home and several villages northwest of Athens.

The fire in the Vilia area, which was burning through dense forest, began on Monday shortly after another wildfire broke out to the south-east of the Greek capital, in the Keratea area. The two were the most severe among dozens of wildfires to break out that day across the country, the fire department said.

Hundreds of wildfires have burned across Greece this month, fuelled by the country’s longest and most severe heatwave in decades.

Arson has been suspected as the cause of some. Yesterday, police announced they had arrested two people on suspicion of setting two fires, both of which were quickly extinguished.

The first was a 54-year-old Greek man who allegedly used a lighter to set fire to papers and dried vegetation in shrubland on the outskirts of a village west of Athens on Sunday. He fled the scene but was detained by a passing police patrol, authorities said.

The second case involved a 29-year-old foreign woman, whose nationality was not released. She is accused of setting dried leaves alight on the ground near a tree in a square in central Athens. Police in the area extinguished the flames and arrested the woman.

Intense heat and wildfires have also struck other Mediterranean countries in recent weeks, with fires killing at least 75 people in Algeria and 16 in Turkey. 

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]