Fires in Europe: latest developments

Here are the main developments related to the wildfires raging in western Europe on Saturday:

The government delegation in Madrid said on X early Saturday that overnight conditions had "greatly aided the fight against the wildfires, which advanced little and decreased in intensity".

With temperatures dipping around Madrid, "there is a real opportunity now to tackle this fire with some guarantee of success," the central government's delegate in the Spanish capital, Francisco Martin, told reporters late Friday.

But he warned that Saturday would be "difficult" as "the wind is expected to rise in the morning, with rather erratic gusts".

French authorities ordered the evacuation of towns near the southwestern city of Bordeaux "as a precaution", as wildfires moved towards the area.

The traffic information website Bison Fute urged drivers to avoid roads in the Gironde department, where Bordeaux is located, to free up access for emergency services.

Around 63,000 people have been evacuated or ordered to remain indoors in the Madrid region as wildfires continued to spread, the interior ministry said late Friday.

The massive wildfires forced NASA to evacuate one of its three global deep space communications facilities in Spain on Friday, impacting the agency's ability to communicate with space probes.

Around 500 additional soldiers will be sent to "support the firefighters" battling blazes in southwest France, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said after a crisis meeting with his key ministers.

More than 140,000 people have been evacuated from areas threatened by wildfires in France's southwest, France's interior ministry said.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told the TF1 broadcaster that authorities would "do everything to protect" Bordeaux, the nearest city to the fire.

A wildfire raging near Madrid that has forced thousands of evacuations is "at its peak" and impossible to control, said Carlos Novillo, Madrid's regional government emergency management chief.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will go to the zone to visit the emergency coordination centre there early Saturday, his administration said.

A massive fire near Madrid is close to merging with another blaze in neighbouring Castilla y Leon, government official Nicanor Sen Velez has said.

"It is very bad news," he told journalist.

Spanish police said they had arrested a man for setting off a fire in Castilla y Leon region by using farm machinery in breach of a ban in the tinderbox conditions.

Another person was under investigation for the same incident, the police said.

People in towns and villages around Madrid have been relaying their experiences of escaping the fires, some with just the clothes they were wearing.

"If you don't run from it and you try to face it, it devours you," Ecologio Cabrera, 86, told AFP after fleeing with nothing. "I have never experienced anything like this."

The European Union has said it is deploying four specialised water-bombing planes to Spain and three to France to help fight the fires there after the two countries requested assistance.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government had deployed "all available resources" to fight the fires.

"We are living through a dramatic situation, not only in various Spanish provinces but also in regions of neighbouring countries," he wrote on X.