Spain faces ‘complex’ three days with risks of heatwave and strong winds reigniting some fires – Europe live
But in a bit more encouraging news, AFP and Liberation reported that the fire in Lanton (16:33) was brought under control this afternoon.
US-Saudi strikes in Iraq push region into ‘uncharted territory’, analysts warn
US-Saudi strikes on Iran-backed militia in Iraq on Wednesday have pushed the region into “uncharted territory”, analysts have warned. Amid stark warnings of a widening and increasingly “unpredictable” conflict, Riyadh’s decision to publicly join the US in striking sites associated with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, killing at least 20 fighters, has added another complicating dimension to the war. The US-Saudi strikes on Wednesday came after a brief lull in direct US attacks on targets in Iran, with Tehran’s allies in Yemen and beyond becoming increasingly drawn in. Iran, meanwhile, launched missiles at US military installations in Jordan, in its first attack in the region since the pause in fighting with the US began. After the tit-for-tat strikes, the pause in fighting appeared to be at an end, with the US president, Donald Trump, saying the US would be “be hitting [Iran] hard”, even as he claimed the strikes in Iraq were coordinated with the government, despite Baghdad’s condemnation. In Baghdad, the Iraqi presidency called the air raids on the PMF, also known as al-Hashd al-Shaabi – an armed alliance that includes powerful pro-Iran factions – as “a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty, targeting its official institutions”. The PMF is a network of Shia-majority factions that was established in 2014 to fight the Islamic State group. Their efforts were overseen by the Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani, the former head of the Quds force, the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Suleimani was killed by a US missile strike in Baghdad during Trump’s first term. Iraqi prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, who recently met Trump, called off a planned meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah on Thursday in the wake of the strikes. Iraq’s Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, an Iran-backed militia, added that Washington’s and Riyadh’s interests and security would face consequences, as mourners shouted Shia sectarian slogans and “Death to America!” as they carried the bodies of slain fighters in body bags out of a hospital in Mosul, northern Iraq. Iraq, which has been heavily affected by the closure of the strait of Hormuz – through which most of its oil is exported – has struggled to prevent the war between the US and Iran spilling over its borders. Iraq’s governments have long sought to maintain a delicate balance between the US, which invaded the Shia-majority country in 2003, and Iran, which has long sought to exert influence there and has backed powerful militias that played a leading role in the fight against IS. While Saudi Arabia has reportedly been involved in a handful of secretive strikes on Iran as part of the war, Riyadh’s overt involvement marks a new turning point in the conflict. It comes barely a week after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels announced a blockade of Saudi ports and cargoes at the entrance to the Red Sea. The latest serious flare up in fighting follows days in which Tehran and its proxies have targeted bases and facilities of the US and its allies, including in Saudi Arabia, despite the brief US pause. The sense of growing chaos in the Middle East was summed up by Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House. “Everyone is trying make sense of something that is increasingly senseless. One view is that the informal [US] pause in direct strikes on Iran saw a shift from Tehran to its proxies to maintain pressure [on Washington]. But there is no longer any plausible deniability because everyone knows how the relationships are intertwined,” Vakil said. On the Iranian side, suggested Vakil, the unpredictability of Tehran’s tactics appeared to be deliberate to pressure Trump “either into confrontation or concession” with the aim of maintaining “a stranglehold on the Strait off Hormuz”. Vakil also said countries in the region were interpreting the chaotic context of the conflict as a historic opportunity, including to weaken Iran. And on the Saudi side, she said there was a similar desire to be unpredictable. “No one wants to stay in the status quo.” “I think from the point of view of the Saudis,” said H A Hellyer, a senior associate fellow in Middle East studies at the Royal United Services Institute, “there is a feeling that the Iranians are doing what they are doing because they feel that the Gulf Arab states won’t move up the escalatory ladder. The Saudis want to make it clear that assessment is wrong and that if Tehran thinks the Gulf states are easy prey, they are wrong.” The problem, added Hellyer, was that while the Saudis may have rationalised the attack on the PMF as a precisely calculated act, it may be impossible to anticipate the response. “Because we don’t know that, we are in uncharted territory not just because of the context of the war this year, but the wider issues in the region. “And it is risky because Tehran sees itself as having been targeted by the US and Israel in a war of existential survival. They see everything through a prism that they have to reset the of the game in the region dramatically even if they are wrong and over playing their hand,” Hellyer said.
Body found in suitcase in Athens 11 days ago that of 38-year-old British woman
A body found in a suitcase in an abandoned building in central Athens has been identified as that of a 38-year-old British woman, with Greek authorities saying she had been dead for several weeks. Eleven days after the macabre find, police shed some light on the mystery of a body that until Wednesday had remained unidentified, after appealing to foreign law enforcement agencies. “The remains, we can confirm, have been identified as belonging to a British woman,” one well-placed source said. “Her next of kin have been informed,” they said, adding it had been ascertained the victim had been born in Scotland in 1988. The woman, whose body was found wrapped in cloth and placed in a bin bag inside the suitcase, was described as 5ft 4in tall with auburn hair gathered back in a bun. She was wearing a black T-shirt and shorts but had no tattoos or other distinguishing marks. Police were alerted after a homeless man reportedly discovered the suitcase on 18 July in a derelict building in Kypseli, a district popular among foreign nationals in downtown Athens, according to the public broadcaster ERT. The woman had reportedly flown to the region from the US, arriving in Greece, on 29 June, from Cyprus. Greek homicide officers sent fingerprints to Interpol after drawing a blank on local databases. US authorities had provided evidence on the basis of the DNA that police released on Wednesday. Detectives cordoned off the building on Evelpidon Street as they investigated the circumstances of the woman’s death. Police spokesperson Konstantina Dimoglidou had previously said CCTV was being examined to try to trace the woman’s movements before her death. Authorities were treating the incident “as a criminal act, given how the body was found”, she told Skai TV. Airlines are also believed to have been approached as investigators try to reconstruct the Briton’s journey to Greece and determine if she was travelling alone. Officials in Greece and Cyprus were scouring flight logs and hotel bookings. Local media, citing the results of a postmortem, said the victim had been dead for eight days before the discovery. There was “no evidence” of a struggle or signs of injury. Greek officials did not rule out UK investigators also joining the inquiry. The British embassy acknowledged it had been informed but made no further comment. Greece is no stranger to British tourists dying in what is a popular holiday destination – often by drowning or as a result of road accidents – “but incidents like this are very rare”, officials said.
Bird flu is spreading locally and Australia faces more wildlife deaths. How bad could it get?
Australia has entered a new phase in dealing with the incursion of deadly H5N1 bird flu, with authorities confirming on Wednesday that local transmission of the highly virulent strain had taken place. “We have had what is suggestive of local transmission for the first time,” Julie Collins, the federal minister for agriculture, fisheries and forestry, said on Wednesday afternoon, after 11 new suspected detections were reported in South Australian birds. “We will expect to see increased evidence and deaths of wildlife … given there has been some local transmission,” she said. “This small shift in the situation will be very disappointing to many, but is certainly not an unexpected development as the last continent to detect H5 bird flu.” Now that authorities believe transmission of H5 strain is occurring locally, what does this mean for Australia’s wildlife, and how bad could things get? What’s the current status of H5N1 bird flu in Australia? On Wednesday morning, South Australian authorities announced 11 new suspected bird flu detections in greater crested terns in the state’s south-east, including four cases on Kangaroo Island. That brings Australia to a total of 27 confirmed detections. Julie Collins, the agriculture minister, said the Consultative Committee on Emergency Animal Diseases – comprising federal and state and territory authorities – had met on Wednesday and agreed that “some local transmission has occurred between a number of greater crested terns that are resident in South Australia”. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Dr Beth Cookson, Australia’s chief veterinary officer, said genetic sequencing showed all confirmed cases detected to date were related to sub-Antarctic strains of the virus. Clare Scriven, the SA minister for primary industries, said earlier on Wednesday: “This is concerning but not unexpected. We knew that eventually when bird flu arrived in Australia it would spread. It has spread on every other continent around the globe.” To date, there have been no H5 detections in poultry or agricultural industries in Australia. “The risk to human health remains low,” Collins said. How could bird flu affect wildlife on Kangaroo Island? One of the Kangaroo Island bird flu detections was at Seal Bay, home to the country’s third-largest Australian sea lion population. Conservationists have expressed fears for the sea lion population there. Alexia Wellbelove, campaigns director at the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS), said Australian sea lions were “now on the frontline of the potential wildlife crisis”. About 80% of the Australian sea lion population is found in South Australia; the endangered mammal has seen populations decline by 60% in four decades, with remaining numbers about 12,000. “In South America, this virus killed 30,000 sea lion pups in just six months following transmission from birds to marine mammals,” Wellbelove said. “On our own Heard Island, it killed more than 13,000 elephant seal pups in a single season … we now have to face the very real possibility of similar devastation here at home, in a species already teetering on the edge.” Scriven said on-beach tours at Seal Bay were temporarily paused to keep people separate from the “very vulnerable” animal population and to reduce the risk of spreading infection. What can be done to stop the spread of bird flu? Not much, unfortunately. Cookson said on Wednesday: “We do know from the overseas experience that once the virus becomes more widespread in wild bird populations it will not be possible to avoid losses in susceptible wildlife in the natural environment.” Authorities had anticipated the arrival of H5N1 in Australia through migratory birds “for a number of years”, she said. They will continue to focus on surveillance, to confirm where the virus is circulating and to “reduce the impacts where possible”. Collins said the federal government had invested more than $113m preparing for the virus’s arrival. “We have also, working with states and territories, now released a further $24m.” Without listing specific animals, Cookson said the government was taking “a number of actions in high-priority conservation species, including site- and species-specific planning”. There would also be a focus on protecting captive breeding populations, and implementing farm biosecurity measures to “limit contact between wild birds and poultry”. Groups including the AMCS and the Invasive Species Council have called on the federal government to establish a $200m national wildlife resilience fund, “focused on emergency protection and recovery for our most at-risk species”. How bad could bird flu get in Australia? Worldwide, the H5N1 variant has caused “unprecedented levels of ongoing outbreaks”, killing millions of wild birds and tens of thousands of mammals. Large-scale deaths have not yet occurred in Australia, but the major concerns relate to potential wildlife impacts: more than 150 native bird species have been assessed as being at “very high risk” of extinction or major decline if they are infected – including the red goshawk, fairy tern, plains-wanderer, shy albatross, black swan and western hooded plover. More than 10 mammal species are at very high risk, including the Australian sea lion, the subantarctic fur seal and the Australian fur seal. There could also be significant impacts on the poultry industry. Globally, an estimated 140m farmed birds have died or been culled since January last year. In the United States, the virus was linked to a 220% spike in egg prices in the first quarter of 2025. Western Australia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry has warned that if the virus were to reach commercial flocks, it could push egg prices above $10 a carton. Mass culls could be necessary, and the RSPCA has called for fast-tracked research into more humane killing methods, such as the use of nitrogen in gas or foam. Human-to-human transmission of the virus is not common, but since 2003, there have been 1,000 reported cases of H5N1 in humans globally, with a 48% fatality rate.
A decade on the Iberian frontline has shown me that Europe’s climate emergency is impossible to deny
Spain has changed immeasurably since I arrived here 10 years ago to begin work as the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent. Over that time, the push for Catalan independence has exploded, sputtered and faded out; the Covid pandemic has hit with unimaginable ferocity, before seeming to linger for a face-masked eternity; and Podemos and Ciudadanos – the two upstart parties that once seemed likely to alter the Spanish political landscape irrevocably – have risen and fallen. But one change has been so insistent, so undeniable and so painfully visible, that it has come to eclipse all others. A decade ago, perhaps naively, I could never have imagined how much time I would spend reporting the effects of the climate emergency here and in Portugal. Nor would I ever have imagined that things would get this bad, this fast. The facts, however, speak for themselves. Europe is the fastest-heating continent, warming at a speed more than twice that of the global average, and the Iberian peninsula has become the sometimes scorched, sometimes sodden, frontline of the climate crisis. The wildfires still burning here and in France – which have led to the evacuation or confinement of approximately 330,000 people since last week – are merely the latest manifestation of all that. It’s hard to think of a better example of all this than the autumn of 2024. At the end of September that year, the photographer Gonçalo Fonseca and I trudged around the northern Portuguese municipality of Albergaria-a-Velha, trekking through a landscape of blackened trees, burnt-out cars and ruined, roofless houses. The fires that had inflicted the damage the previous week killed nine people, injured dozens more and razed 100,000 hectares of land across northern and central Portugal. They had been fuelled by strong winds, dry conditions and unseasonably hot temperatures of more than 30C (85F). It all inevitably brought back memories of the calamitous blazes of 2017, which claimed 66 lives. João Oliveira, the head of the civil protection agency in Albergaria-a-Velha, showed me a picture on his mobile phone of a towering tidal wave of grey smoke preparing to engulf the town. *** An annual fixture He said there was no comparison whatsoever with the fires of previous years, adding: “The amount of energy the fire created, the amount of damage it did and the intensity and violence of the fire, were something we’d never seen before.” Four weeks later, I parked my car on the edge of the eastern Spanish town of Utiel, pulled on my wellingtons and headed to see the aftermath of the deadly floods that had hit the Valencia region 48 hours earlier, killing more than 230 people. Ruined houses, wrecked cars, people speechless on the streets, and an inches-deep carpet of thick, sticky mud everywhere. The only reference points I had for what I saw there and in the town of Chiva were the super El Niño I witnessed in northern Peru in 1998, and the devastation I reported on a month after the Nepal earthquake in April 2015. But these days, the kind of danger and destruction I thought I’d never see in Europe is becoming an almost annual fixture on the peninsula – and beyond. Helena Smith, the Guardian’s correspondent in Greece, points out that warnings have long sounded from her part of the continent. “I still vividly recall Eleni Myrivili – who is now the UN’s global chief heat officer, but was then newly installed as Athens’ heat maestro – saying, ‘Heat will be the story of the next decade,’” said Helena. “That was in 2021. The same week I had written of apocalyptic scenes on the fringes of the Greek capital and ‘infernos redolent of Dante’s hell incinerating everything in their path’. It was inconceivable it could be worse. And, yet, every year it is: testimony to the irrefutable fact that the climate emergency is our runaway train, that temperatures in Athens are set to be on a par with Bahrain; that Spain and France are the new Greece, and London the Athens I first knew, in terms of heat, in the late 90s.” Likewise, Angelique Chrisafis, the Guardian’s Paris correspondent, told me that much of her reporting has been focused on the impact of the climate crisis – including its attendant inequalities – since May’s record-breaking heatwave. “I remember Issam, a 10-year-old boy in the southern suburbs of Paris whose top-floor school classroom reached 40C and whose badly insulated flat was hit by blazing sun against the windows all day, often leaving his mother dizzy and struggling to breathe,” she said. Three weeks ago, I spoke to Jeanne Henny, a British woman who would have burned to death in her car had she not risked a three-point turn on a narrow cliff road as she fled the flames in Almería earlier this month. And on Saturday afternoon I visited people who had been evacuated from their homes west of Madrid to a municipal sports centre on the outskirts of the capital. “[The sky] turned orange and looked very apocalyptic,” one man told me. “It felt like the end of the world.” But of all the many climate emergency stories I’ve reported over the past few years, there are two that I still think about often. In Utiel, I met Miguel Aleixandre, a young man who told me about the night of the floods in Valencia. As the waters rose to a height of three metres, Miguel looked out across his dark neighbourhood and saw elderly neighbours signalling with candles at their windows. They were hoping to attract the attention of the rescuers who would, in some cases, arrive too late. Then he heard the sound of windows breaking and realised that the flood waters were pouring into the houses of people who would soon drown, trapped in their homes. Fifteen months earlier, I had stood in a petrol station in the north-western Spanish town of Tábara listening to an account of the brave but fateful decision that had cost Ángel Martín his life the previous summer. Desperate to prevent the wildfires in the Sierra de la Culebra from devouring his town, the 53-year-old builder’s yard owner climbed into his excavator to try to dig a firebreak. Within minutes, Martín and the vehicle were swallowed by the flames and the thick, black smoke. Video showing him emerging from the inferno, his clothes consumed by the flames, went around the world. For a week or two at least, the figure of the burning, running, stumbling man became a symbol of the human consequences of the climate emergency. Martín suffered burns to 80% of his body and died in hospital three months later. “We still talk about him a lot,” Martín’s friend, Montse Fernández Blanco, told me. “And I remember his jokes and what a good, happy person he was. The thing is he would have done it again because that’s what he was like.” And yet, four years after Ángel Martín ran out of the flames, and two years after people died under the flood waters in Utiel, the same arguments, denial and political point-scoring continue to hamper efforts to prepare for the decades to come – decades that are all but certain to make all this seem mild. We can hardly say we weren’t warned. To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
Rescue teams face ‘race against time’ in search for trapped survivors as death toll in Japan rises to at least 13 – as it happened
At least 13 people have been killed and many reported missing after the earthquake struck the Kumamoto area on the southern main island of Kyushu with a magnitude of 7.1, according to the Japan meteorological agency. The US Geological Survey measured it at magnitude 6.8. Emergency workers are continuing their search for survivors in southern Japan after yesterday’s powerful earthquake left widespread devastation, with buildings collapsed, roads severely damaged and emergency teams digging through rubble. The Kumamoto region of Kyushi island in Japan has experienced another “strong earthquake” this afternoon, according to local media. The news outlet RKK, based in the city of Kumamoto, reported that an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 5.8 hit the Amakusa and Ashikita regions at about 10.20pm (4.20pm BST), according to the Japan meteorological agency. Japan’s Mainichi newspaper has reported some remarks from Akio Yoshida, the president of retail company Aeon which operated a shopping centre that partially collapsed after yesterday’s earthquake and a subsequent explosion. Yoshida told a press briefing that three workers at the shopping centre in Kumamuto are still missing. He confirmed three people were killed, all of whom were employees. Weather officials in Japan have warned of another hot day across wide areas of the country, including in the southern Kumamoto prefecture on the island of Kyushu where the earthquake hit. Temperatures are forecast to reach 35C in Kumamoto, according to the Japan meteorological agency, with highs of 38C in Miyazaki on Kyushu island. Toyoto and Honda said they will suspend operations in their factories in Kumamoto in southern Japan until Friday. “The situation, including aftershocks and recovery efforts, is changing daily,” Toyota said in a statement. “We will continue to prioritise safety above all else.”
Next 12 hours ‘decisive’ for wildfire near Madrid, says Spanish PM
The next 12 hours will be “decisive” for a large wildfire burning near Madrid, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said, as extreme heat renews pressure on firefighters racing to control blazes across southern Europe. Temperatures pushed higher by climate breakdown are forecast to reach 39C on Wednesday in Bordeaux, where firefighters have kept a monster blaze in nearby pine forests from reaching the suburbs, and 37C in Madrid, west of which Spain’s largest wildfire on record is burning. Dozens of ground crews managed to contain the Madrid fire overnight, emergency services for the region said on Wednesday morning, but a separate fire near València, where temperatures will peak at a cooler 32C, is still out of control. In televised comments from the Navalcarnero command centre on Wednesday morning, Sánchez said the situation near the capital was improving but stressed it was the first time in Spanish history that a wildfire had been raised to “operational level 3”, with the national government taking over the disaster response. “I believe the next 12 hours will be very important,” he said. “They are going to be decisive in consolidating the work done by the national civil protection system.” Accompanied by strong winds, the fourth heatwave of western Europe’s scorching summer has alarmed firefighters, who warn it makes blazes harder to quell and raises the risk of fires restarting in areas that have been stabilised. The recent fires have been particularly troubling as they have burned so close to major cities. French authorities benefited from a calm night on Tuesday that allowed flare-ups to be swiftly extinguished but warned of “unfavourable” developing weather conditions that could hamper progress. The prefecture of Gironde said 126 firefighters had been injured since the start of the fire but the total burned area remained stable at 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres) on Wednesday morning. Wildfires have burned a record-breaking area of France, data from the European Forest Fire Information System shows, while both France and Spain have experienced record-breaking numbers of fires for this time of year. More than 330,000 people in southern Europe have been forced to flee their homes and hotels. Officials began to lift evacuation orders on Tuesday as fires were brought under control, allowing tens of thousands of people living in towns near Bordeaux, Madrid and València to go back to their homes. Some of them returned to find burnt-out buildings and charred belongings. José Fernández, a 74-year-old pensioner, told AFP he had “no money, no documents, no home” after he came back to the remains of what used to be his house in Pelayos de la Presa. “This place has been reduced to a total ruin.” Europe’s wildfire season is growing hotter and longer as carbon pollution heats the continent twice as fast as the global average. Repeated heatwaves this year have dried vegetation and turned forests and shrubland into tinderboxes, alarming EU officials, who have said wildfires could still be burning in November. Sánchez repeated calls to create a “national pact” to address the climate emergency. “These fires may or may not be caused by humans, but in any case, they increase exponentially as a result of these high temperatures, low humidity, and also the atmospheric phenomena that these fires, these large fires, cause in our forests.” Earlier this week, the European Commission said it had sent France seven planes and four helicopters from countries as far away as Sweden and Turkey, while in Spain, it said it had mobilised six planes from Greece, Italy and Turkey, along with 134 personnel and 41 vehicles from Portugal. A Super Puma helicopter from Serbia was expected to arrive in Madrid on Wednesday, according to Spain’s interior ministry, with 40 personnel and 18 vehicles to shortly follow. The European Union’s crisis-management team said on Wednesday it expected difficult weeks ahead, fearing a further outbreak of wildfires in Italy and Greece later in the summer. Maria Zuber, a senior official at the EU’s emergency response coordination centre in Brussels, which coordinates the dispatch of firefighting planes, equipment and teams to countries that have asked for help, said the next few days would be “very difficult” for France and that “now we see it will go to Greece”. Moisés Galán Santano, a wildfire expert at the ERCC, said more needed to be done to prevent wildfires and that it would be a task for many years. “The [emergency] response is not only the answer. It’s the last answer. But it’s not all the answer. We need to focus on prevention.” Officials said prevention encompassed policies from early-warning systems to more animal grazing – to reduce vegetation – and changes to forest management. Earlier this year, a policy paper from the European Commission set out how countries could better prevent and recover from wildfires that are expected to become bigger and more damaging across the continent. It promoted measures such as more extensive grazing, the restoration of wetlands, rivers and floodplains, better data on forest fires and raising public awareness of risky behaviour and safe evacuation. Scientists say western Europe’s scorching summer has been deadly, costly and exacerbated by fossil fuel pollution. Rapid analyses have found June’s heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” in a world without climate breakdown, while the recent level of soil dryness in western Europe – a driver of bigger blazes – was made five times more likely. The heatwaves are estimated to have claimed at least 10,000 lives and cost grain farmers €2bn in lost crops. Vula Tsetsi, co-chair of the European Green party, called on European institutions to take action on Wednesday and noted the European Commission had not yet published its heating and cooling plan, which was expected in April. “Climate-driven heatwaves and wildfires are already claiming lives, destroying homes and ravaging forests at a record pace,” she said. “There is a widening gap between the scale of Europe’s heatwaves – literally hitting every EU country – and the absence of decisive European action.”