La priorité est de "sauver des vies" face aux incendies, déclare le Premier ministre espagnol
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday that firefighters were working to "save lives" in the wildfires raging west of Madrid, warning that the fight ahead would be "complex" with strong winds forecast.
The fires ravaging the parched countryside have forced 35,000 people to flee their homes, according to the Interior Ministry, in what officials have described as the worst fire ever recorded in the region.
Thick grey smoke invaded the sky west of the capital and the smell of burning reached the streets of central Madrid, irritating the throats of residents and forcing them to keep their windows closed.
"Our priority, our thinking, our goal, is your lives, saving your lives and protecting inhabited areas," Pedro Sanchez told reporters in the village of Cenicientos, located in the fire zone.
"We are going to experience some difficult times, because even though temperatures have dropped, we don't know exactly how the wind will evolve, nor what its strength will be," he added.
The drop in temperatures overnight offered "a window of opportunity this weekend to fight (...) this very serious fire," Mr. Sanchez added.
But the central government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martin, had warned earlier that "erratic gusts" of wind were expected.
Two separate forest fires in the Madrid region merged on Friday to form a huge blaze, which threatened to join a third near Avila, in the neighboring region of Castile and León.
AFP
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