At least 12 dead in Spanish wildfires

**Ankara Desai** (0:00)
This is The Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Uncle Desai, and at 15 Hours GMT, on Friday the 10th of July, these are our main stories. Wildfires in Spain kill at least 12 people as a heat wave continues across much of Europe. One of Europe's biggest airlines, Rhein-Eck, confirms that a passenger on one of its flights needed medical attention after he was partially sucked out of a window. And Japan's lower house of parliament passes a bill aimed at averting a succession crisis in the imperial family.
Also in this podcast, how high powered sound waves can help save identical twins affected by a rare pregnancy condition. And back in Britain for the first time in nearly a thousand years.

**Dr. Millie Horton-Inch** (0:49)
I did well off a little bit seeing it taken off the lorry. So I imagine I'll probably be in floods of tears when I actually see it.

**Ankara Desai** (0:55)
The Bayeux Tapestry arrives in London for an exhibition at the British Museum.
At least 12 people have died in a wildfire in southern Spain, where fire crews are working to bring one of the country's deadliest blazes under control. The authorities have said most of the victims appeared to be foreign tourists. The fire spread rapidly in a wooded area around the town of Los Calados in the province of Almeria. Its mayor, Francisco Reyes, said the authorities were working hard to get people in areas still at risk to safety.

**Francisco Reyes** (1:32)
The fire started and has spread very quickly. We have had to evacuate residents from Almocaizar and residents from Beda.
And now we are heading towards the campsite because the wind is blowing from the west and it's going to reach the campsite where we also have 400 to 500 people. We are very concerned because houses are burning.

**Ankara Desai** (1:54)
Our correspondent Guy Hedgeco gave us this update.

**Guy Hedgeco** (1:57)
As we heard there that firefighters are struggling to deal with this fire in what are very hot and dry conditions and also with high winds as well, which make it extremely difficult. But there are concerns that the death toll could increase further, potentially quite substantially further because there are still 19 people unaccounted for, we're told, by the authorities.
Of those who have been confirmed to have died in the fire, four are believed to be British, people who were travelling in a British car and seem to have been trapped by the flames last night. There were another seven who died when they were trying to escape the flames on foot. So there are concerns that the death toll might increase further. But several hundred people have been evacuated, taken to local sports halls, and the firefighters are battling the flames alongside members of the military as well.

**Ankara Desai** (2:53)
And do we know much about the cause of this? I know there's a lot of consequences regarding the heatwaves which are blazing across Europe at the moment.

**Guy Hedgeco** (3:02)
Well, yes. I mean, of course, the very hot dry conditions that we've been seeing across Southern Europe, particularly across Spain over the last few days, will have contributed to this. And there has been a heatwave over the last few days.
We're told by eyewitnesses and the authorities who believe that the cause of this may have been a power cable that fell near a road and then that sparked a fire next to a forested area and then with the high winds and the dry conditions, it just spread extremely quickly. That was yesterday afternoon. So that's the theory at the moment as to the cause of the fire.

**Ankara Desai** (3:39)
And what's the reaction been as well? We heard just briefly there from the mayor, anybody else?

**Guy Hedgeco** (3:44)
We've heard from officials, we've heard from Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the King and Queen of Spain, who they've all expressed condolences and their sadness at this tragedy. I think across Spain there is shock because Spain is very used to wildfires at this time of year. I mean, last year we saw a record breaking year in terms of the amount of land that was burned. But what people are not used to seeing here in the summer is people dying because of fires. That's relatively unusual, certainly in these kinds of numbers. 11 people dead. That has really stunned people here, I think, not just in the south of the country, but right across Spain.

**Ankara Desai** (4:22)
As we've been hearing, conditions in southern Europe have been particularly hot so far this summer. Chris Fawkes from BBC Weather says there were particular conditions that made the spread of this wildfire so fast.