French firefighters control hotspots as wildfire burns area four times the size of Paris

Firefighters in south-west France are working to control the last hot spots of a massive wildfire that has burned an area four times the size of Paris and forced thousands out of their homes.

The blazes that burned 42,000 hectares of pine forest and tourist resort areas in Bordeaux’s Gironde region on the Atlantic coast have not spread for several days.

On Thursday, government officials said lower temperatures and higher humidity overnight were helping ease pressures on beleaguered fire crews, who turned their attention to forests and undergrowth along dunes of fine sand.

Europe is facing an extremely hot summer, fuelling wildfires from the Atlantic coast to the eastern Mediterranean.

The UK Spain, Germany, Greece and Turkey all battled blazes on Thursday.

The wildfire in south-west France initially forced 224,000 people to flee. Authorities have allowed 144,000 evacuees to return this week.

Officials on Friday seemed cautiously optimistic.

“It’s stabilised, but not totally stopped,” French interior minister Laurent Nunez told RTL radio on Friday. “Hot spots remain.”

Mr Nunez also said in a social media post that Ukraine was to dispatch 70 civil security personnel and ten vehicles in the coming days to help strengthen the deployment.