A man was killed by his bulldozer while helping to fight wildfires in Portugal, officials said on Wednesday. The 65-year-old was trying to escape the flames in the northern municipality of Mirandela when he fell from the vehicle and was run over, according to Commander Paulo Santos of the National Civil Protection Authority.

The fires have ravaged small, sparsely populated towns in the country's northwest, forcing locals in many cases to act as firefighters. About 2,382 square miles have burned across Spain and Portugal.

In neighbouring Portugal, where fires are also blazing, another firefighter was killed on Sunday in a "tragic" traffic accident, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said. Fires have also broken out in Greece, France, Turkey and the Balkans as a heatwave has scorched swathes of southern Europe.

The fires in Spain this year have burned 158,000 hectares or 610 square miles, according to the European Union’s European Forest Fire Information System. That is an area roughly as big as metropolitan London.

Fire crews in Greece, Spain, and Portugal are racing to contain wildfires. Calmer winds on Thursday have helped slow the blazes. Southern Europe remains at high risk due to hot, dry

A heatwave is continuing to affect the Iberian Peninsula. Thousands of firefighters have been deployed to battle ongoing blazes and towns have been evacuated. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited affected regions to meet with the heads of emergency teams.

Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires.

Firefighters have been battling to put out blazes across southern Europe in one of the worst summers for wildfires in 20 years