A fire in the south of France burned through 500 hectares (1,240 acres) of land and destroyed a campsite, with 2,000 people evacuated before the blaze was brought under control on Tuesday, reports The Guardian.
The French environment minister said the climate crisis was exacerbating conditions of drought that fed the fire. No one was injured in the fire, authorities said.
“Drought and fire are two sides of the same coin: climate change,” Christophe Béchu, the minister of ecological transition, said in a tweet during a visit to site of the fire in the Pyrénées-Orientales near the Spanish border.
The blaze tore through a tourist area about 30 minutes from Perpignan, which was vulnerable due to “intense heat, dryness and tumultuous winds of up to 180 kph”, authorities said.