The death toll from wildfires near the northwestern Turkish city of Bursa has risen to four after two volunteer firefighters were killed.
The couple died in hospital after being pulled from a tanker truck that overturned on its way to a bushfire, the IHA news agency reported.
Another worker died earlier at the scene, and on Sunday a firefighter died of a heart attack.
Their deaths bring the total number of wildfire deaths in Turkey since late June to 17, including 10 volunteer rescuers and forestry workers killed in a fire in Eskisehir in western Turkey on Wednesday.
Massive fires broke out around Bursa, Turkey's fourth-largest city, over the weekend, forcing more than 3,500 people to flee their homes.
A hazy haze of smoke from ongoing fires and smoldering leaves hung over the city on Monday morning.
Unseasonably warm temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds are fuelling the spread of wildfires, with record heatwaves seen in Turkey and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean.
The fires around Bursa were among hundreds that have broken out across Turkey in the past month.
Although firefighters managed to contain damage to a limited number of homes, large tracts of forest were reduced to ashes.
The crew of the fire truck, made up of volunteers from the neighbouring province of Bolu, was heading to the village of Aglasan, northeast of Bursa, to fight a fire that broke out after the vehicle fell into a ditch while driving on a rough forest road, IHA said.
Turkey's Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said on Sunday evening that there were at least 44 fires burning in the country.
He described the two fires in Bursa province as the most serious, as well as fires in Karabuk in northwestern Turkey and Kahramanmaras in the south.
The government has declared disaster zones in two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunç said criminal cases had been opened against 97 people in 33 of Turkey's 81 provinces in connection with the fires.
A crowd gathered outside a police station in the village of Harmancık, 57 kilometres (35 miles) south of Bursa, on Sunday evening after learning that a suspected arsonist had been arrested.
The angry crowd demanded that the suspect be handed over to them.
The crowd dispersed after police assured them that a thorough investigation would be carried out.
Albania's Defense Ministry said firefighters were battling at least six separate forest fires on Monday.
Two weeks of fires have destroyed thousands of hectares of forest in the Balkan country.
The areas most at risk were in the northeast, where water was dumped on hard-to-reach mountain plateaus and much of the firefighting work was done by aircraft.
In the south of the country, night winds caused fires in the municipalities of Delvine and Konispol in the Himara region on the Adriatic coast, where forest fires broke out last week.
Authorities said at least a dozen people were arrested over the weekend in connection with the wildfires.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
