A Spanish soldier died on Sunday while helping efforts to extinguish a major wildfire in the northeastern region of Aragon when his truck tumbled into a ravine, authorities said.
The regional government had announced what it called the largest firefighting deployment in Aragon’s history to tame the blaze, with the arrival of 100 French reinforcements taking the total to 1,000 people.
A complicated week marked by unpredictable winds and high temperatures saw the flames spread across 17,500 hectares , according to the regional government’s latest estimate.
The central government’s top representative in the regional capital Zaragoza, Noelia Herrero, said the accident struck in the Atares ravine near Mount Oroel, a locally emblematic peak located in an area of rugged terrain with narrow roads. Three other occupants of the fire engine were rushed to hospital with injuries of varying severity, the regional government said in a statement. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expressed “all my love and my solidarity with the family and colleagues” of the victim on X, saying “we are constantly indebted” to the emergency services. Sunday night’s work would focus on “consolidating the containment in the most dangerous sectors”, after a day that saw their “partial containment”, the regional government statement said. The authorities have said the number of affected hectares straddling the provinces of Huelva and Seville only refers to the perimeter of the fire and does not mean the entire area has been burned.
