PARIS, Aug 6: The sweltering heat suffocating much of Europe showed no signs of abating on Wednesday, as firefighters battled deadly forest fires across the southern part of the continent and pollution levels soared.

With what French forecasters described as a “dome of hot air” stuck over much of the continent, residents of cities across Europe again wilted as temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius.

Worse yet, meteorologist Jerome Lecou of France’s national weather service Meteo France said the cooling effect of nighttime was being progressively reduced so that each day risked being hotter than the previous one.

The searing heat coupled with severe drought across much of southern Europe has sparked deadly wildfires in Croatia, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, resulting in more than 30 deaths and forcing thousands to flee their homes.

Hundreds of weary firefighters gained the upper hand on blazes in central and southern Portugal — the worst in the country’s history — that have claimed 14 lives and consumed 54,000 hectares of woodland in the past week.

In Lisbon, police said they had detained 26 suspected arsonists, including a former fireman, as 400 officers fanned out across the affected area to continue their probe.

The Portuguese government declared a national disaster at the start of the week and received more bad news on Wednesday, when a NATO spokesman said that alliance members might be unable to provide water-dropping aircraft to Lisbon.

Germany sent Lisbon three Puma helicopters that had been battling blazes in France, where five people died last week in fast-moving forest and brush fires along the fashionable Riviera and on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.

French firefighters tackled a series of smaller blazes on Wednesday, as did their counterparts in Italy, where dozens of residents and holidaymakers were evacuated in the northern Tuscany region, a popular summer tourist destination.

London on Wednesday set a new heat record for Britain this year at 35.4 degrees.

The dog days of Europe’s summer have been caused by an anti-cyclone which has anchored itself over the west European land mass, holding off rain-bearing depressions over the Atlantic and funnelling hot air north from Africa.—AFP