Portugal fights forest fires

Three more people have died in a wave of forest fires in central Portugal, bringing to six the number killed in the past week in the country's worst blazes for two decades, officials said yesterday.

Commander Antonio Roaldinho, duty officer at the National Rescue Operations Centre, said the bodies of two women were found in Chamusca, which is about 100 kilometres northeast of Lisbon and whose name means "singeing" in Portuguese.

A man of 50 was overcome by flames as he tried to escape by tractor from a fire near Ponte de Sor, 100 kilometres east of Lisbon.

Three people died last week in blazes that have spread in unusually hot, dry weather with strong winds fanning the flames.

A fireman also died when a water-carrying truck in which he was travelling crashed near Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo, 300 kilometres northeast of the capital.

More than 2,800 firefighters and 400 soldiers are fighting dozens of blazes. They are equipped with 500 vehicles and water bombing planes sent by Italy and Morocco in response to an international appeal for help by the Portuguese government.

Just over the border in southwestern Spain, helicopters and fire-fighting planes battled forest fires in a record-breaking heatwave that has killed seven in the country.

Mr Roaldinho said emergency workers were desperate to prevent fires sweeping through several Portuguese towns, including Macao, about 120 km northeast of Lisbon.

Eyewitnesses reported that several houses had burned down in Macao and residents were carrying buckets of water to help firefighters battle the blaze street by street.

One blaze, extinguished on Friday after three days, burned down more than 11,000 hectares of mostly pinewood forest in the biggest fire tallied by the government in 15 years.

Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso told state radio he had called an extraordinary cabinet meeting for Monday aimed at limiting damage from Portugal's worst fires in 20 years.