(Reuters) – Several dozen firefighters were using aircraft to battle a wildfire that had broken out in the French municipalities of Cagnes-sur-Mer and Villeneuve-Loubet, close to Nice international airport, officials said on Tuesday.
The fire affected an uninhabited area close to a highway, a local town hall official told Reuters, adding he was unaware of any evacuation measures for now.
Highway and rail traffic was interrupted, Nice police said on social media network X, formerly Twitter. Officials at Nice airport were not immediately available for comment.
Extreme weather throughout July has caused havoc across the planet, with record temperatures in China, the United States and southern Europe sparking forest fires, evacuations, water shortages and a rise in heat-related hospital admissions.
The Provence-Alpes-Cote-d’Azur region, home to large cities like Marseille, Nice and Aix-en-Provence, was being closely watched on Tuesday, amid the prevalence of high temperatures and strong winds in an area historically prone to wildfires.
The Bouches-du-Rhone department on Tuesday was placed under a “red alert”, with authorities seeing a “very high risk” of wildfires.
There were several fire outbreaks in southeastern France on Tuesday afternoon, and authorities closed access to parks and markets to minimise the risks to residents, according to a report in Local media Nice Matin.
(Reporting by Augustin Turpin, writing by Tassilo Hummel, editing by Marine Strauss and Bernadette Baum)
