France: Two major wildfires hit the southwest forcing tourists to evacuate

France 24 reports that two major wildfires have torn through the country's southwest, forcing more than twenty thousand people to evacuate during the peak summer holiday season. Around eight hundred firefighters, backed by hundreds of gendarmes and soldiers, are battling the flames about fifty kilometres west of Bordeaux. Among those cleared out are hundreds of tourists who had come to the area for their holidays. The fires are part of a broader wave of deadly blazes sweeping western Europe amid scorching heat, with the total area burned across EU countries this year already the second largest on record.

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