PARIS, July 25 (Reuters) – French authorities evacuated thousands of people from suburbs near Bordeaux on Saturday as wildfires in areas around the city showed no signs of abating.
Sophie Brocas, who heads the local administration of La Nouvelle-Aquitaine et de la Gironde which covers the Bordeaux region, said on X that the areas of Le Haillan, Eysines and Merignac were being cleared out.
French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said that more than 141,000 people had so far been evacuated from the Gironde and Landes regions which lie close to Bordeaux, and where the wildfires first broke out this week.
“The fires which are hitting our country have reached a level that has never been seen before,” Lecornu wrote on X on Saturday. The French army has also been drafted in to help.
So far this month, temperatures have averaged 32.2 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Aquitaine region, which is 7.3 degrees Celsius (13.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above the normal high for July between 1961 to 1990, according to data on Reuters Climate Monitor.
(Reporting by Camille Raynaud, Stephane Mahe, Elizabeth Howcroft and Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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