Over 166,000 people were evacuated in France and Spain as unprecedented forest fires raged near Madrid and Bordeaux, a French city flanked by tourist havens and world-renowned vineyards.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday asked the army to mobilise to help contain the worst wildfire the country has ever seen after seeking European Union help, as a local official warned the blaze was heading towards Bordeaux.

Some 44,000 people fled the up-market Cap Ferret peninsula south of Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast, with the only road threatened by flames.

At least 141,000 people have been evacuated in southwestern France and 25,000 in the Madrid region, among them more than 1,200 old and disabled people, French and Spanish officials said.

Madrid and Paris have called in European Union help as flames whipped up by strong winds and boosted by drought tore through tinder-dry forests.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said France had never before seen this type of fire on this scale and pledged to "do everything" to protect Bordeaux.

Carlos Novillo, the Madrid regional government's emergency management chief, said the wildfire near the capital was "at its peak and is currently beyond the capacity of firefighters to contain".

Spanish prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will go to the zone on Saturday morning to visit the emergency coordination centre there.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has called a crisis meeting of key ministers.

About 40 of the 1,000 firefighters battling the Cap Ferret blaze have been injured, authorities said. Three firefighters have died in wildfires in France and Italy this week.

Two of the three major wildfires west of Madrid have merged into one, threatening a suburban town, said officials.

Some European regions have suffered at least two heatwaves since May. And drought blamed on human-fuelled climate change has heightened the threat from wildfires this year, the World Weather Attribution group said in a study published this week.

Firefighting reinforcements have been sent from across France and, following appeals for assistance, the European Commission said it was sending four water-bombing planes to Spain and three to France.

The fires burning around Madrid are the worst in the region's history, regional president Isabel Diaz Ayuso said as she announced more evacuations.

Two fires west of Madrid had merged and were heading for the town of Navas del Rey, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the capital.

Spain has been hit by a series of wildfires in recent weeks.

The largest active fire was still burning in Guadalajara province, around 100 km north of Madrid, where it has scorched about 32,000 hectares over the past week. (AFP)




Edited by Robert Kemp