Severe weather allows for cooling in some burned areas of France.

Meanwhile, around 1,500 residents of several towns in north-eastern Spain had to flee their homes because of a forest fire that got out of control.

The flames in the Spanish region around the town of Añón de Moncayo, about 70 kilometers west of the city of Zaragoza, are fueled by strong gusts of wind, a firefighter said on Spanish state television station RTVE on Sunday.

In addition, the wind direction is constantly changing.

The situation is critical.

TV showed how residents of the region, already enveloped in acrid smoke, tried to stop the flames on the outskirts of the villages with garden hoses and buckets of water.

They were assisted by 300 professional firefighters.

Also further south in Jumilla near Murcia, the fire brigade fought a forest fire in strong winds, which is said to have been triggered by lightning.

2022 is the most devastating forest fire year for Spain since records began.

According to measurements by the European earth observation system Copernicus, more than 260,000 hectares have been destroyed in almost 388 forest fires since the beginning of the year.

These 2600 square kilometers correspond to the area of ​​Saarland.

Storm in France

The end of the third heat wave of this summer and the onset of rain gave firefighters in France a breather in their efforts to fight the forest fires in some places on Sunday.

However, vigilance was required: in the southern French department of Aveyron, a fire flared up again on Saturday, and a storm front also swept across the country.

In the southwest of France, the weather with a cloudy sky, precipitation and temperatures around 25 degrees has recently been favorable for the fight against the large forest fire south of Bordeaux.

A government official said on Sunday afternoon that the Landiras fire was "contained".

Since Tuesday, the forest fire has devastated 7,400 hectares.

A dry thunderstorm was announced, instead there was "plenty of rain", said Marc Vermeulen, director of the Gironde department fire department.

However, he called for "extreme caution" and stressed that "a contained fire does not equate to a fire extinguished".

It is strictly forbidden to enter the forest.

The situation was different in the southern French department of Aveyron, where a thousand people had to leave their homes after a forest fire flared up again.

Local authorities said the blaze near the village of Mostuéjouls appeared to be on the way out before flaring up "violently".

According to this, an additional 500 hectares of land have burned since then.

In total, more than 1,200 hectares fell victim to the flames on Sunday morning.

For the remainder of Sunday, however, the prefecture of the department expected the situation to improve due to favorable weather conditions.

The local authorities also reported success in the fight against fires in the Drôme and Maine-et-Loire departments and in the Brittany region, or they were optimistic about the weather.

According to the French weather service Météo-France, however, there was a thunderstorm warning for eight departments in the country.

Fire on Greek island

Meanwhile, the fire that has been raging for days on the Greek holiday island of Thasos was partially brought under control on Sunday morning.

The danger has not been banned, however, as there are still numerous sources of fire, local authorities said.

Four fire-fighting aircraft, five helicopters, hundreds of firefighters, volunteers and military units are deployed to eliminate the source of the fire, as the fire department announced on Sunday morning.

The island in the north of the Aegean is densely forested, the fires are raging on impassable terrain.

According to civil protection, more than 13,000 hectares have burned in Greece so far this year.