Israeli firefighters battled flames for a second day Monday in the hills west of Jerusalem, forcing the evacuation of five communities and prompting the government to ask for international help.

"The Greek foreign minister already said he will help as much as possible," Foreign Minister Yair Lapid wrote on Twitter.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat told AFP Greece and Cyprus had agreed to send firefighting planes to Israel.

Italy, France and other countries were also being contacted, the foreign ministry said.

Nearly 20,000 dunams or 2,000 hectares had burned over two days, National Fire and Rescue Commissioner Dedi Simchi told reporters.

Twelve firefighting planes dumped water and fire retardant onto burning woodland, Jerusalem fire and rescue services spokesman Eddi Aharonoff said.

As night fell, around 100 fire crews continued working in the dark.

"Nobody is talking about going home," Aharonoff told AFP.

The fires broke out in the wooded hills west of Jerusalem on Sunday, sending acrid-smelling clouds of smoke over the holy city and its iconic Dome of the Rock, and forcing the evacuation of a psychiatric hospital.

Firefighters managed to contain the blaze before strong winds sent flames racing through woodland again on Monday afternoon.

Police drove through communities in the fire's path, using loudspeakers to urge residents to leave their homes.

Simchi told reporters the fires were similar in scale to outbreaks in northern Israel in 2010, at the time the largest in the country's history.

Those fires burned 24,000 dunams (2,400 hectares) of land.

Simchi said he believed the latest fires did not start spontaneously.

"Yesterday there was no lightning in Israel. The fire broke out as a result of human activity," he said.

"If it was neglect, if it was recklessness, if it was intentional, if it was arson, we don't know."

Israel and other countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea have had a searing summer, with deadly wildfires in Algeria, Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey.

Algeria was hardest hit, with at least 90 people killed in wildfires last week.

Morocco and Tunisia have also been affected.

Israel sent firefighting aircraft and crews to Greece earlier this month to help bring fires there under control.

Fresh fires force evacuation of Greek villages
Athens (AFP) Aug 16, 2021 - Greek firefighters struggled to control two new blazes that broke out around Athens on Monday, forcing the evacuation of several villages and clouding the sky over the capital as they braced for a long night battling the flames.

Greece's prime minister has linked the devastating fires to the "climate crisis", speaking last week as wildfires swept across the Mediterranean, engulfing parts of Greece, Italy and Spain.

Scores of firefighters battled fresh blazes near the Greek port city of Lavrio southeast of Athens, as helicopters and planes bombed the flames with water, a firefighting official told AFP.

Locals from three nearby villages were ordered to evacuate.

Authorities said that the fire had reached several houses, but the extent of the damage was unclear. The sky in Athens was once again covered in smoke.

"The fire front is large and the winds in the area are very strong," Thanasis Avgerinos, the deputy governor of East Attica region told AFP.

"This is a very flammable pine-covered area."

Firefighters are battling to keep the flames away from a national park in the Sounion area, as it will then be extremely difficult to control the blaze.

Meanwhile, another forest fire broke out in Vilia, Attica, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Athens, prompting the mobilisation of air and ground forces.

Authorities have called for the evacuation of at least four nearby villages, while another 40 firefighters were battling the blazes, according to a firefighting official.

The fires come on the heels of blazes in recent weeks that have destroyed homes, property, pine forests, wildlife and livestock across more than 1,000 square kilometres (386 square miles) of land.

The island of Evia, 200 kilometres northeast of Athens, has paid the heaviest price with more than half of the land burned.

The Peloponnese peninsula, 200 kilometres west of Athens, as well as the northern suburbs of the capital, were also heavily affected by about 600 fires.

Those blazes were finally brought under control on Friday.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the fires offered a dire warning.

"The climate crisis tells us everything must change," he said last week.

As global temperatures rise, heatwaves are predicted to become more frequent and intense, and their impacts more widespread, scientists say.

Meanwhile, Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias, who has been coordinating the fire-fighting efforts, suffered an "ischaemic episode" and underwent a successful heart operation, the hospital treating him said in a statement on Monday afternoon.

The minister, 52, will remain at the cardiological clinic for monitoring, it said.

Secretary General for Civil Protection, Vassilios Papageorgiou, will step in until Hardalias recuperates, according to a statement by the Greek Civil Protection department.

Most Algeria forest fires 'under control': emergency services
Algiers (AFP) Aug 16, 2021 - Most of the deadly forest fires that have hit northern Algeria in the past week are "under control" and no longer endanger residents, the country's emergency services said Monday.

Over 90 people, including 33 soldiers, have been killed in dozens of wildfires in the North African country since August 9.

"Most of these fires have been brought under control and don't represent a danger to residents," said fire service spokesman Colonel Farouk Achour.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has decided to grant financial aid of one million dinars (about $650) to each of the fire victims' families.

The government has blamed arsonists and a blistering heatwave for the dozens of blazes, but experts have also criticised authorities for failing to prepare for the annual phenomenon, exacerbated by climate change.

Algerian police have so far made 49 arrests after the lynching last week of a man wrongly accused of starting one of the deadly fires, according to local media.

Algeria is Africa's biggest country by surface area, and although much of the interior is desert, the north has over four million hectares (10 million acres) of forest, which is hit every summer by fires.

Last year some 44,000 hectares went up in flames.

In neighbouring Morocco, firefighters worked through the night on Sunday and into Monday to bring fires under control amid unfavourable winds.

The fires have destroyed more than 700 hectares of forest in three days, according to a forestry official, but no victims have been reported.

He said eight fire-fighting planes were used to bring the flames under control.

Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that man-made global warming will bring higher temperatures and more extreme weather events across the world.

Firefighters gain on Spanish blaze as heatwave eases
Madrid (AFP) Aug 16, 2021 - Firefighters gained ground Monday against a wildfire in central Spain that forced hundreds from their homes, as their colleagues across the border battled a blaze in southern Portugal.

The Spanish teams were helped by falling winds and an easing of what may well be a record-setting heatwave.

But the two Mediterranean countries were only the latest in Europe to face extreme weather and fierce fires, which climate scientists warn will become increasingly common because of manmade global warming.

In Spain, nearly 1,000 firefighters backed by 15 water-dropping aircraft have been battling a blaze burning since Saturday morning in Avila province, that at one point was fed by winds of up to 70 kilometres an hour (54 miles per hour).

Monday's weaker winds gave them some respite however. Crews achieved "a certain control" of the fire's perimeter, said Juan Carlos Saurez-Quinones, environment minister of the regional government of Castilla y Leon region.

If the improved weather conditions continued, firefighters should be able to stabilise the blaze on Monday, he told journalists.

The wildfire has so far destroyed 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres) of land and forced the evacuation over the weekend of nearly 1,000 people from several nearby towns and villages.

Spain has been in the grip of a heatwave since Wednesday which has sparked several fires, as the state meteorological agency (AEMET) recorded what appeared to be record temperatures.

Their provisional data registered a peak of 47.4 degrees Celsius (117.3 Fahrenheit) at around 5:00 pm (1500 GMT) Saturday in the southern city of Cordoba. That is a tenth of a degree higher than the last record, also recorded there, in July 2017.

The heatwave was due to end Monday with the arrival of lower temperatures in all of Spain, except in the southernmost part of the southern region of Andalusia, said AEMET spokesman Ruben del Campo.

The risk of fires nevertheless remained high across the country because "after several days of heatwave the vegetation has dried up more", he told reporters.

In neighbouring Portugal some 200 firefighters were battling a blaze near Castro Marim in the southern province of Algarve, a European tourism hotspot, local officials said Monday.

European countries such as Greece and Turkey have already experienced heatwaves and devastating wildfires this summer.

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Wildfires ravage Greek island of Evia
Paris (ESA) Aug 16, 2021
Parts of the Mediterranean and central Europe have experienced extreme temperatures this summer, with wildfires causing devastation in both Turkey and Greece. The blaze on Evia, Greece's second-largest island, is one of the worst hit with fires having burned down large forested areas, homes and businesses - forcing thousands to evacuate by sea to save their lives. This false-colour Copernicus Sentinel-2 image was captured yesterday on 11 August, and has been processed in a way that included the ne ... read more