Fast-moving flames and choking smoke engulfed mountains by the glitzy Spanish resort of Marbella on Friday, killing an elderly Briton, injuring five others and sending thousands fleeing.
About 800 people — firefighters and emergency military personnel, backed by 31 planes and helicopters — battled the forest blaze, which was fanned by warm, dry winds in southern Spain, officials said.
Flames licked the treetops, lighting up the sky in the early hours as a 12km line of fire glowed across the Sierra Negra mountains by the Costa del Sol resort.
Photo: AFP
The inferno, which reportedly forced up to 5,000 people from their homes, killed one man, left a couple with major burns and sent a mother and her two children scurrying into a cave to escape the danger.
A British man’s corpse was found in a small rural home near Ojen, not far from Marbella, despite an evacuation order the previous night, a spokesman for the Andalusia regional government said. The 78-year-old man’s burnt corpse was found near the remains of the house, which had been consumed by flames, the government said in a statement. A search of the ruins found no other victims.
Another five people were taken to hospital, among them a Spanish couple with second and third-degree burns over about two-thirds of their bodies, the government spokesman said.
“They are in a serious state with mechanical ventilation,” he said, describing them as a married couple: a woman of 58 and her husband, who was about the same age.
The flames reached their chalet in the district of Rosario in the foothills of the mountains overlooking long white beaches along the Mediterranean coast, Spanish media said.
A 40-year-old mother and her two children, one aged three and the other 11, took refuge from the inferno in a cave, and were treated for bruises and given oxygen in hospital, officials said.
The inferno broke out on Thursday afternoon and rapidly gained strength into the night.
“The whole mountainside was burning,” one evacuated resident, Catherina, told Spanish news agency Europa Press.
“At dusk, you could see the full glare of the fire and the sky was entirely covered in red,” said another resident from near Marbella named Antonio.
In the early morning, the wind died down and a brief sprinkling of rain fed hopes for relief.
However, an Agence France-Presse photographer said the wind blew hard again later in the day as temperatures rose. The town of Ojen’s about 3,000 residents were all evacuated as a thick cloud of smoke billowed in the cinder-clogged air. Surrounding trees were blackened by the fire. However, residents in other parts of the scorched region were allowed to return home.
In the late afternoon, firefighters were focusing on hotspots near Ojen and trying to prevent the fire spreading into new areas after it jumped a highway, officials said. Spain’s major Mediterranean motorway was briefly cut off, but reopened in the afternoon.
Marbella’s beaches and vibrant night life attract about 1.5 million foreign tourists a year, mostly Britons, but also Nordic visitors and Germans, French, Italians, Dutch and Belgians.
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.
Flames destroyed more than 153,000 hectares of land between Jan. 1 and last Sunday, three times the amount during the same time last year and the highest amount in a decade, according to agriculture ministry figures.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not