Germany’s firefighters on the decline as aging strikes

Firefighters in Italy continue to battle raging blazes. Late Friday, some 150 people were trapped in two seaside areas in the port city of Catania, before being rescued.

Four people have died as the country reels from the devastation wreaked by the fires. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the country "will continue to take all necessary steps to heal our nation's wounds."

Amid the current heatwave, Italy is struggling to contain the wildfires that are raging around the country. In addition to the scorching heat, there is a variety of reasons why wildfires have become such a problem.

Fires rage in Castel di Lucio, Sicily. Emergency services are rushing to stem the blazes which are scorching parts of Italy's southern regions of Sicily and Calabria.

Spain is on alert for wildfires as a heatwave that has enveloped southeastern Europe in recent days shifts west. Temperatures are forecast to reach highs of around 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in much of the Iberian peninsula in the coming days. As firefighters try to extinguish a fire in Tarragona, forestry agents try to prevent a new fire from breaking out near Barcelona amid the worst heat wave in nearly 20 years.

In the vast and sparsely populated Siberian region of Russia, blazes have so far burned through more than 9.2 million hectares (22.7 million acres), an area the size of Portugal, according to Russia's forestry agency. The head of a Siberian region has urged residents to stay at home as smoke from raging forest fires raises health concerns.

Officials in Spain said that, while wildfires could now be under control, the possibility of another flare-up was high as forests are very dry. In Greece, two new blazes were being tackled.

Violent forest fires have been raging in the Var region of southern France where thousands of people have been evacuated including tourists from campsites. The fires are spreading at a speed of 4km per hour and hundreds of firefighters are battling the blaze in windy conditions.

Flames surge into the air as firefighters try to contain the Dixie Fire near Milford, California. The wildfire in Northern California has grown to become the largest single wildfire in California state history.

Fires sweep through a forest in Chiquitania, a transition zone between the Amazon and the Gran Chaco lowlands in eastern Bolivia, where large blazes have already ravaged at least 200,000 hectares, according to reports from local authorities.

Russia's central regions are battling "extreme" wildfires fuelled by an unusual heatwave that comes after forest fires linked to climate change ravaged Siberia for most of the summer.

Hundreds of firefighters are battling the Windy Fire to protect several groves of giant sequoias in the United States. The fire has already charred 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares), and a number of separate fires are converging on the California woodland that is home to the huge trees.