Death toll rises as heatwave shows no sign of abating
The number of deaths in Spain jumped from 16 to 19, with the latest victims all elderly: two women killed by heat stroke and a man who died while doing farm work.
In Portugal, the death toll rose to 15 after another victim was burned to death in one of the worst wildfires there in recent memory. Around Europe, about 40 deaths have been blamed on the sizzling temperatures.
Paris has been almost as hot as Mecca this week, with high temperatures in the French capital at or exceeding 37 C (98.6 F) every day.
Forecasters offered little hope of relief from the heat, caused in part by intense monsoon activity in Africa south of the Sahara that has funnelled hot desert air over Europe and blocked cooler Atlantic lows.
Animals were suffering from food and water shortages. Thousands of industrially-raised pigs, poultry and rabbits in the French regions of Brittany and the Loire have died of the heat.
The French Poultry Association says one million chickens have died, and an agricultural union in the central Loire, regional pork farmers have lost 30,000 pigs mostly young animals.
Jean Dube, director of the FDSEA, an agricultural union based in Brittany, said there were too many animal carcasses for sanitation workers to collect so farmers have been authorised to bury animals themselves.
Meanwhile, wildfires fanned by hot winds were reported in Croatia, Greece, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and Italy.
In Italy, where temperatures were climbing well into the 30s C (90s F) yet again, hundreds of firefighters continued to battle a blaze that has been raging for day around Savona, on the north-western Riviera.
Hundreds of people have fled their homes or have been evacuated as a precaution, and smaller fires continued to rage in other parts of the country.
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