French authorities have arrested two people for starting a wildfire that has devastated nearly 1,900 hectares of Fontainebleau forest, a UNESCO biosphere reserve near Paris, officials said on Tuesday.
The authorities have also evacuated over 1,000 local residents from the affected area.
The fire started on Sunday in the sprawling Fontainebleau forest, a former royal hunting estate that today is dotted with quiet villages, about 60 km (40 miles) southeast of the capital.
While French emergency services are battling to control the blaze due to an ongoing heatwave, police on Monday arrested two people, one of whom is an 18-year-old man without a criminal record.
The scale of the fire ravaging the French countryside is so massive that it required the deployment of four Canadair aircraft – an unprecedented move in the greater Paris region – as well as two Dash planes and three water-bombing helicopters.
More than 600 firefighters remained mobilised to douse the raging flames with air support. The fire, according to French authorities in the area, said that the fire was still spreading because weather conditions were not very conducive for operations on Monday.
An emergency response has now been reinitiated in southern Paris to prevent the fire from spreading further.
President Emmanuel Macron said on X that all available resources had been deployed to fight what he described as "an exceptionally large wildfire".
The country recorded more than 2,000 excess deaths during the June heatwave and 300 during the high temperatures in late May, according to official figures.
Since the start of the year, wildfires have scorched some 25,000 hectares of land in France, said director general of civil security Julien Marion on Friday.
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