In pictures: Med coast wildfires

Summer wildfires have forced more than 1,000 people from houses and holiday homes along the Mediterranean coast this weekend.

At least 10 people – including six firefighters – have died in fires in Spain, France, Greece and the Italian island of Sardinia in recent days.

Thousands of firefighters are still working around the clock to bring blazes under control.

Six people have died in Spain, which has been hardest hit, with at least seven big fires in the south and east of the country.

Several are now rated as stable, but British holidaymakers planning to visit the region have been advised by the Foreign Office to check its website before they travel.

Strong winds have fanned flames in the hot, dry weather, where temperatures have reached 39.1C. Authorities hope that forecasted cooler conditions will ease the crisis.

Anne Kirkbride, 55, who plays Deirdre Barlow in Coronation Street, was one of dozens of British tourists caught in the Spanish fires. She was among some 1,500 people evacuated from the coastal resort town of Mojácar in the south-east of the country.

“It’s like a horror film around here,” said Benjamin Jackson, a 23-year-old British expatriate. “For as far as you can see, basically everything has burned down.”

Sharon Pressley, who lives in Mojácar, said: “Police are saying they think it could be arson rather than the temperatures, but that is just speculation. The area where I live is free of fire at the moment, but the smoke and devastation is still there for all to see.”

Local authorities have deployed thousands of people and more than 30 aircraft to combat the flames in tinder-dry pine forest regions, and Spain has been placed on maximum fire alert. Lightning bolts from an electrical storm that hit the Aragón region caused several of the blazes, El Pais reported.

Fires in the Mediterranean bring destruction to hundreds of thousands of hectares of land every year. Wildfires are still burning on the French island of Corsica, while three suspected arsonists have been arrested in Greece and Italy. On the Italian island of Sardinia, 10 water-dropping planes helped fight a series of bush fires that killed two people, including a shepherd who had been trying to rescue his flock. Helicopters and boats were used to rescue more than 120 people trapped on a beach at Capo Pecora in the south-west.

The island’s prison also had to be evacuated, with inmates temporarily transferred to the beach.

In France, an inquiry is under way into how a military exercise sparked a major wildfire on the outskirts of Marseille. The blaze, which threatened homes and destroyed 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres) of brush, provoked an angry reaction from officials and residents.

• In southern Japan, heavy rains have destroyed homes and set off floods and landslides that left at least five people dead on the island of Kyushu. In a week of downpours, a mudslide buried a nursing home in Yamaguchi prefecture on the main island of Honshu last Tuesday, killing 14 people.