Spain on front line of wildfire risk as heatwave rages on

In the southern region of Andalusia, emergency services said they deployed aircraft on Thursday to water-bomb a fire near the village of Lujar in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

They said flames estimated to have engulfed around 1,800 hectares led to more than 600 people being moved from their homes overnight.

Authorities in the region, where temperatures were forecast to peak at 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) on Thursday, said other fires were burning in the provinces of Huelva and Jaen.

No deaths have been reported in the current spate of still relatively small fires, which late on Wednesday also affected five other Spanish provinces, the Agriculture Ministry said.

But a run of hot, dry days has created an extreme risk of others breaking out across swathes of southern Europe, particularly in central and southern Spain, according to the European Commission's Forest Fire Information System.

"There are many woodland areas in Andalusia and the region remains in a state of high alert," said a spokeswoman for regional authorities in Granada.

A heatwave affecting large parts of Europe has settled on most of Spain.

State meteorological office Aemet said on Wednesday it expected extreme temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius in central provinces for at least another week.

Madrid has broken temperature records for both June and July this year, peaking at 39.9 degrees Celsius on July 6.

(For a European Commission graphic on wildfire risk in Europe http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/effis/applications/current-situation/)

(Reporting by John Stonestreet; Editing by Mark Heinrich)