World

A fierce heatwave in western Europe on Monday left much of the continent wilting under a scorching sun, smashing temperature records and feeding ferocious forest wildfires.

In Britain, the 38.1 Celsius (100.9 Fahrenheit) in Suffolk, eastern England, made it the hottest day of the year and the third-hottest day on record.

Expectations are now high that the current British record of 38.7C could be broken and 40C breached for the first time, with experts blaming climate change and predicting more frequent extreme weather to come.

Across the Channel in France, a host of towns and cities recorded their highest-ever temperatures on Monday, the national weather office said.

The mercury hit 39.3C in Brest on the Atlantic coast in the far northwest of the country, smashing a previous record of 35.1C from 2002.

Saint-Brieuc, on the Channel coast, hit 39.5C beating a previous record of 38.1C, and the western city of Nantes recorded 42C, beating a decades-old high of 40.3C, set in 1949.

Firefighters in France’s southwest were still struggling to contain two massive fires that have caused widespread destruction.

For six days, armies of firefighters and a fleet of waterbombing aircraft have battled against blazes that have mobilised much of France’s firefighting capacity.

– France on ‘red alert’ –

Forecasters put 15 French departments on the highest state of alert for extreme temperatures Monday, including in the northwest Brittany region, where the Atlantic port of Brest hit 39.3C Monday — another record.

Ireland saw temperatures of 33C in Dublin — the highest since 1887 — while in the Netherlands, temperatures reached 35.4C in the southern city of Westdorpe. While that was not a record, higher temperature are expected there on Tuesday.

Neighbouring Belgium also expected temperatures of 40C and over.

The European heatwave, spreading north, is the second to engulf parts of the southwest of the continent in recent weeks.

European Commission researchers meanwhile said nearly half (46 percent) of EU territory was exposed to warning-level drought.

Eleven percent was at an alert level and crops were already suffering from lack of water.

– Holiday markers evacuated –

Blazes in France, Greece, Portugal and Spain have destroyed thousands of hectares of land and forced thousands of residents and holidaymakers to flee.

An area of nine kilometres (5.5 miles) long and eight kilometres wide was still ablaze near France’s Dune de Pilat, Europe’s highest sand dune, turning picturesque landscapes, popular campsites and pristine beaches into a scorching mess.

A total of 8,000 people were being evacuated from near the dune Monday as changing winds blew thick smoke into residential areas, officials said.

“The smoke is toxic,” firefighter spokesman Arnaud Mendousse told AFP. “Protecting the population is a matter of public health.”

A nearby zoo in Archachon evacuated its more than 1,000 animals, sending them to other facilities to escape the smoke.

The evacuations added to the 16,000 tourists or residents already forced to decamp in France, many to emergency shelters.

In Spain, fire burning in the northwestern province of Zamora claimed the life of a 69-year-old shepherd, regional authorities said.

The previous day a fireman died in the same area.

Later Monday it was reported that an office worker in his fifties had died from heatstroke in Madrid.

Authorities have reported around 20 wildfires still raging from the south to Galicia in the far northwest, where blazes have destroyed around 4,500 hectares (more than 11,000 acres) of land. 

– ‘Enjoy the sunshine’ –

In Portugal, almost the entire country remained on high alert for wildfires despite a slight drop in temperatures, which last Thursday hit 47C — a record for July.

Fires have killed two, injured around 60 and destroyed between 12,000 and 15,000 hectares of land in Portugal.

In Britain, the government, already on the ropes after a series of scandals that forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to quit, was accused of not taking the situation seriously enough.

Johnson was criticised for having failed to attend an emergency meeting on the crisis on Sunday, instead hosting a farewell party at his state-funded country retreat.

Deputy prime minister Dominic Raab also drew flak from frontline medics by appearing to minimise the threat from the extreme heat after he told Britons to “enjoy the sunshine”.

The Sun tabloid headlined its coverage of the heat “British Bake Off”, observing that the “scorcher” was making the UK hotter than Ibiza where temperatures were a comparatively low 30C.

“It is a bit frightening,” Karina Lawford, 56, told AFP as she took a stroll by the sea in Tankerton on the north Kent coast, saying the heat reminded her of Australia where she lives.

The extreme temperatures saw flights suspended at Luton Airport near London and Royal Air Force base Brize Norton due to “defects” on the runway, with no let-up expected for Tuesday.

Trains were cancelled and schools closed in affected areas.

But some like 64-year-old plumber Dave Williams urged people to “just get on with it”.

“It’s nothing to get excited about, is it really? If it isn’t Brexit or the weather we don’t know what else to talk about, do we?” he said.

In Brighton, on England’s south coast, bank worker Abu Bakr put the heatwave in perspective.

“I come from Sudan,” he said. “Forty, forty-five degrees is just the norm. This is as good as it can be.”

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US aid chief Samantha Power on Monday promised $1.18 billion to help avert famine in the Horn of Africa and urged other nations including China to do more to fight a food crisis aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Power voiced alarm that the war as well as climate change were worsening hunger around the world, just after a decade of progress had been “obliterated” by the Covid pandemic.

“Today we are confronting something even more devastating as not only are tens of millions more people facing that grave hunger, many of them are at risk of outright starvation,” she said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Power, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, said the situation was especially dire in turbulent Somalia, conflict-hit Ethiopia and Kenya, the so-called Horn of Africa which is forecast to experience its fifth straight drought later this year.

Announcing a visit to the Horn of Africa this weekend, Power said that at least 1,103 children there are known to have died and some seven million other children are severely malnourished.

Power said the $1.18 billion in US aid would include emergency food — notably sorghum, a locally used grain more readily available than wheat — as well as a peanut-based supplement for malnourished children and veterinary services for dying livestock.

“Now we need others to do more, before a famine strikes, before millions more children find themselves on the knife’s edge,” she said.

Global prices of food have skyrocketed due to the war in Ukraine, a leading wheat exporter, with Russian warships blocking ports as Kyiv lays mines to avert a feared amphibious assault.

Power criticized the “sinister” policies of Russia but also pinned blame on China — seen by the United States as a leading global competitor — over its trade restrictions on fertilizer and “hoarding” of grain.

If China released fertilizer or grain to the global market or World Food Programme, it would “significantly relieve pressure on food and fertilizer prices and powerfully demonstrate the country’s desire to be a global leader and a friend to the world’s least developed economies,” she said.

She also issued a tacit criticism of India, which is seen by Washington as an emerging ally but has declined to shun historic partner Russia and has imposed its own export ban on wheat.

Praising Indonesia for lifting restrictions on palm oil, Power said, “We encourage other nations to make similar moves, especially since several of the countries instituting such bans have been unwilling to criticize the Russian government’s belligerence.”

“Countries that have sat out this war must not sit out this global food crisis,” she said.

In a video on a Russian channel, the “new” head of police in Lyman says the invaders were welcomed joyously by residents with cries of: “Finally, Russia is here!”

Now in Kramatorsk, just 42 kilometres (26 miles) away in eastern Ukraine, the police chief forced to flee by Russian troops, Igor Ugnivenko, laughs bitterly.

“I don’t know who this guy is,” he said.

“But just look at him, sitting in my office in the chair that my wife bought for me! Look at the sign on his shirt: USSR.”

“USSR! It’s crazy,” the 37-year-old said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Major Ugnivenko still introduces himself as the head of Lyman’s police.

He left the city on May 23 after weeks of shelling and a major offensive by Russian troops forced the Ukrainians to pull back.

In Kramatorsk, the administrative centre of the Donetsk region that Moscow wants to take over, Ugnivenko remains in contact with some Lyman residents and wants to talk about the situation in the town.

“It’s hard for the civilian population,” said the chief, who wore a black uniform. “There is no electricity, gas or water. How or if food aid is being sent, I don’t know.”

His assertions could not be independently verified by AFP.

– ‘A road to nowhere’ –

Some 8,000 people remain in Lyman — compared to 25,000 before the Russian invasion.

It already saw fighting in 2014 when Russia-backed separatists took over part of the region, and many civilians “were waiting for the Russians to come”, Ugnivenko said.

“Today they shout that everything is going well, that the Soviet Union is back,” said the officer, who was just four years old when the Soviet Union fell apart.

“I am not from a Soviet generation; I barely knew it. I went to a Ukrainian school and university,” he told AFP.

“I speak Ukrainian perfectly and I have no problem with the west of the country,” he added, referring to misgivings among some locals about the government in Kyiv.

“It seems crazy, but what is happening in Lyman is a real return to the past. And it’s a road to nowhere,” he said.

Private properties and businesses have been seized and will be “nationalised” by the Donetsk People’s Republic, the entity self-proclaimed by separatists fighting alongside Russian forces, Ugnivenko said.

– ‘Russian world’ –

A working-class town like many in the industrial region of Donbas, Lyman always lived off the railways — an industry that employs half the population.

“Many workers stayed in Lyman. They thought they could continue working,” Ugnivenko said.

“But the Russians took their equipment and transferred the material to Debaltseve” some 140 kilometres to the south, which is controlled by separatists.

“What I am disappointed by is that people did not understand what was awaiting them. Some people have wanted the ‘Russian world’ for years but will now be disappointed. What future do they have? None!” he added.

“We were maybe a small town, but we had the railways and also a regional trauma centre” opened in 2015, which employed medical staff who fled the city of Donetsk when it came under separatist control in 2014.

Ugnivenko said the building was now partially destroyed and the doctors had left.

Local residents could choose to leave, but only to go towards Russia or separatist-held territories, he added.

“I want my four children to live in a state of law where they can travel as they wish,” added Ugnivenko, who has sent his family away from the frontline to the city of Dnipro.

“Sooner or later, we will liberate our towns,” he told AFP, remembering the idyllic life he led in Lyman until just a few months ago.

“I had the house of my dreams. A wooden house on two floors on the edge of the forest. It was shelled and burnt down in 15 minutes.”

Britain and France were in the grip of a fierce heatwave on Monday facing record temperatures as southwest Europe wilted under a scorching sun and ferocious wildfires devoured more forests.

Forecasters in Britain warned of havoc in a country unprepared for the onslaught of extreme heat that authorities said was putting lives at risk.

Temperatures climbed to 37.5 Celsius (99.5 Fahrenheit) at Kew Gardens in southwest London by 3:00 pm (1400 GMT), nudging towards the country’s all-time record of 38.7C.

Air traffic was suspended at Luton airport, north of London, due to “defects” on the runway

Meteorologists said the 40C mark could be breached for the first time by Tuesday, with climate change blamed and predictions of more frequent and intense episodes of extreme weather in years to come. 

Across the Channel in France, a host of towns and cities recorded their highest ever temperatures on Monday, the national weather office said.

The mercury hit 39.3 Celsius (102.7 Fahrenheit) in Brest on the Atlantic coast in the far northwest of the country compared with a previous record of 35.1 C from 2002.

Saint-Brieuc on the Channel coast sizzled in 39.5 C compared with a previous record of 38.1 C, while western Nantes recorded 42 C, beating a previous high of 40.3 C set in 1949.

“In some southwestern areas, it will be a heat apocalypse,” meteorologist Francois Gourand told AFP.

French  firefighters were struggling to contain two massive fires in France’s southwest that have created apocalyptic scenes of destruction.

For six days, armies of firefighters and a fleet of waterbombing aircraft have struggled against blazes that have mobilised much of France’s entire firefighting capacity.

Forecasters have put 15 French departments on the highest state of alert for extreme temperatures, including in the western Brittany region where the Atlantic coastal city of Brest was expected to hit 40C on Monday — nearly twice its usual July temperature average.

In Ireland, the mercury hit 33.0C in Phoenix Park, Dublin — 0.3C below the all-time record set way back in 1887, Met Eireann said.

The European heatwave, spreading north, is the second to engulf parts of the southwest of the continent in recent weeks.

Record temperatures were recorded in the Netherlands (33.6C) with warnings the mercury could reach 38-39C on Tuesday.

Neighbouring Belgium also expected temperatures of 40C and over.

European Commission researchers meanwhile said nearly half (46 percent) of EU territory was exposed to warning-level drought.

Eleven percent was at an alert level and crops were already suffering from lack of water.

– ‘Heat apocalypse’ –

Blazes in France, Greece, Portugal and Spain have destroyed thousands of hectares of land and forced thousands of residents and holidaymakers to flee.

An area of nine kilometres (5.5 miles) long and eight kilometres wide was still ablaze near France’s Dune de Pilat, Europe’s highest sand dune, turning picturesque landscapes, popular campsites and pristine beaches into a scorching mess.

A total of 8,000 people were being evacuated from near the dune Monday as changing winds blew thick smoke into residential areas, officials said.

“The smoke is toxic,” firefighter spokesman Arnaud Mendousse told AFP. “Protecting the population is a matter of public health.”

A nearby zoo in Archachon evacuated its more than one thousand animals, sending them to other facilities to escape the smoke.

The evacuations added to the 16,000 tourists or residents already forced to decamp in France, many to emergency shelters.

In Spain, fire burning in the northwestern province of Zamora claimed the life of a 69-year-old shepherd, regional authorities said.

The previous day a fireman died in the same area.

Later Monday it was reported that an office worker in his fifties had died from heatstroke in Madrid.

Authorities have reported around 20 wildfires still raging from the south to Galicia in the far northwest, where blazes have destroyed around 4,500 hectares (more than 11,000 acres) of land. 

In Portugal, almost the entire country remained on high alert for wildfires despite a slight drop in temperatures which had hit 47C — a record for the month of July — last Thursday.

– ‘Get on with it’ –

Fires have killed two, injured around 60 and destroyed between 12,000 and 15,000 hectares of land in Portugal.

In Britain, the government, already on the ropes after a series of scandals that forced Prime Minister Boris Johnson to quit, drew fresh criticism for failing to take the situation seriously enough.

Johnson was criticised for failing to attend an emergency contingencies meeting on Sunday and instead hosting a farewell party at his state-funded country retreat.

Deputy prime minister Dominic Raab also drew flak from frontline medics by appearing to minimise the threat from the extreme heat after he told Britons to “enjoy the sunshine”.

The Sun tabloid headlined its coverage of the heat “British Bake Off”, observing that the “scorcher” was making the UK hotter than Ibiza where temperatures were a comparatively paltry 30C.

“It is a bit frightening,” Karina Lawford, 56, told AFP as she took a stroll by the sea in Tankerton on the north Kent coast, saying the heat reminded her of Australia where she lives.

Britain’s chief meteorologist Paul Davies said the heatwave was “entirely consistent with climate change”, telling Sky News the “brutality” of the heatwave was “astounding” but could become a regular occurrence by the end of the century.

Trains were cancelled and schools closed in affected areas.

But some like 64-year-old plumber Dave Williams urged people to “just get on with it”.

“It’s nothing to get excited about, is it really? If it isn’t Brexit or the weather we don’t know what else to talk about, do we?” he said.

And in Brighton, on England’s south coast, bank worker Abu Bakr put the heatwave in perspective.

“I come from Sudan,” he said. “Forty, forty-five degrees is just the norm. This is as good as it can be.”

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