Planes Fight Spain Wildfires, Thousands Evacuated

Scores of villagers spent the night in hotels and student halls after fleeing wildfires that continued raging out of control Sunday on the Spanish Canary Islands.

The fires on the Atlantic islands of La Gomera and Tenerife have forced the evacuation of more than 4,700 people in the past two days, the regional government said.

They have ravaged more than 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) of land on La Gomera where they first broke out a week ago, including part of the Garajonay nature reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

On Tenerife the flames have spread over some 200 hectares.

"Both fires are still active," Canary Islands emergency services spokeswoman Lourdes Jorge said Sunday, adding that nine water-dumping planes were being used to douse the flames on the wooded hillsides.

"We are still on alert for high temperatures on the archipelago and that makes the extinction work more difficult," the spokeswoman told AFP.

The maximum temperature on the islands was forecast to reach 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit) on Sunday, the government weather office said, after a sweltering week across Spain.

In the village of Villehermoso in the north of La Gomera, about 150 people who had fled nearby villages overnight, some by sea in boats, spent the night in hotels and student accommodation, an AFP photographer there said.

Spain is at particularly high risk of fires this summer after suffering its driest winter in 70 years, and blazes have broken out in various parts of the country in recent days.

Officials said two villages were evacuated in the northwestern region of Galicia Friday as flames devoured 800 hectares of vegetation and another wildfire erupted Saturday in the northern Ger region bordering France.

Fires also broke out in the Cabaneros national park in central Spain and near the Donana park in Andalucia in the south.