Firefighters are braced for a sharp rise in temperatures on Wednesday, which could complicate the containment of wildfires.

Two firefighters died in a blaze on the Greek island of Crete Wednesday while crews in France confronted a wildfire four times the size of Paris, officials said.

Local and visitors tell the BBC of disbelief and anxiety as wildfires force more than 300,000 people to evacuate.

The deaths on Crete brought a fatal new dimension to a wildfire emergency stretching from the Atlantic coast to the eastern Mediterranean. At the peak of the evacuations, a third of a million people were driven from homes and vacation sites in France and Spain.

An area of forest in the Les Landes department of southwestern France has been devastated by another wildfire, just four years after a massive blaze in 2022.

George and Amal Clooney are among thousands of residents in southwest France still displaced by a massive wildfire, but crews are gaining control.

Southwest France has seen wildfires in the past. But the fires that raged last week and scorched 100,000 acres are something new to the region.