Wildfires sweeping through south-western France have forced more than 250,000 people from their homes as flames advance towards Bordeaux, the country's celebrated wine-producing region. Officials say the blaze has grown so intense that it is generating its own winds, making its behaviour erratic and difficult to predict, prompting authorities to deploy the military and reduce the scale of the Tour de France to help firefighters tackle the fires.

The wildfire in France forms part of a broader crisis across southern Europe, with more than 250,000 evacuations recorded across both France and Spain, where a national emergency has been declared. The disaster follows a period of extreme heat in France, which recorded over 5,700 excess deaths during an earlier summer heatwave, underscoring the severity of the conditions fuelling the blazes.