AJACCIO, Corsica (Reuters) - Bush fires raged across southern Europe Friday, with a prolonged spell of hot weather turning woodland along the Mediterranean coastline tinder dry.
Hundreds of fires in Spain, France, Italy and Greece have killed at least seven people this week, destroying thousands of hectares of forest and gutting dozens of homes.
The European Union said the fire risk in SOUTHERN (SO.NY)Europe would remain critical in days ahead.
Further north, the problem was rain and wind.
Overnight storms in western and central Poland killed eight people and injured nearly 50 while western Switzerland was pelted by hail as big as table tennis balls.
"It was the apocalypse, I've never seen anything like it," Simon Sentinelli in Fribourg canton told Swiss Television.
Spain has been the worst hit by the fires and authorities said Friday thousands of villagers have had to be evacuated to escape blazes that have killed five firefighters.
Thousands of police and soldiers had been drafted in to help combat seven serious fires in the south and east of Spain.
One of the most damaging blazes that raged for more than 36 hours in Mojacar, in the southern Andalusia region, has been stabilised, authorities said.
On the French island of Corsica, some 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of scrub and bush has burnt in 12 separate blazes over the past 24 hours, with temperatures of above 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and strong winds fanning the flames.
"The current situation is ... of very high to extreme fire danger in large areas of southern Europe and will remain critical over the next few days," an EU statement said.
It defined major fires as those covering an area from 1,000 to several thousand hectares.
ARSON
On the Italian island of Sardinia, just to the south of Corsica, two people were killed by flash fires Thursday and blazes raged Friday in seven different places, with arson once again suspected.
Forest fires also flared on the southern Italian island of Sicily and in the mainland region of the Marche.
"We still have nine active fires but there is no danger to the population as the winds are weaker than yesterday," said Luigi D'Angelo from the emergency office of Civil Protection.
In Greece, more than 320 wildfires have scorched large swathes of forest land across the country this week, but have so far missed homes and other buildings.
In 2007, the worst forest fires in memory raged for 10 days, sweeping through dozens of villages and killing 65 people.
(Reporting by Blanca Rodriguez and Emma Pinedo in Madrid; Pierre Constantini in Corsica, Daniele Mari in Rome, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Patryk Wasilewski in Warsaw)
(Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Jon Boyle and Robert Woodward)