Trapped in their vehicle or caught by the flames while trying to escape on foot, at least twelve people, most likely foreigners, were killed near Almeria, in southern Spain, victims of a forest fire.
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The results of the disaster, undoubtedly one of the most serious in recent history in Spain, remain provisional, with 23 people still not having been located according to the authorities. Eight people were also injured, four of whom suffered serious burns.
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“We have 12 people dead and 23 people still unlocated,” declared Andalusian regional president Juan Manuel Moreno, saying “we hope that these 23 unlocated people are finally found and that they are not dead.”
The fire started late Thursday afternoon from a ditch after a power cable broke along a national highway in the Los Gallardos area, he explained.
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“We are facing a very complex fire, which spread like wildfire,” he detailed, referring to flames which traveled “15 km in two hours”, helped by the wind, Almeria being one of the windiest regions in Spain.
In this area comprising numerous ravines and houses scattered along the hillsides, the topography makes the work of firefighters particularly complicated.
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Possible British victims
The land, on which around 3,200 hectares have already been ravaged, in fact presents “very steep areas where access is difficult, not only for the tankers themselves, but especially for heavy machinery,” said Juan Manuel Moreno.
Faced with the advance of the fire, continued the official, the local authorities asked the population to confine themselves in certain cases and in others to “leave the home by taking one path and not another”
Some of the victims did not heed the safety instructions given to them, he regretted, and “unfortunately, this resulted in their death.
Earlier, Andalusia’s emergency adviser Antonio Sanz said four people died in a car and seven others died trying to escape on foot.
According to him, the victims trapped in the passenger compartment of the car could be British based on the location of the steering wheel (on the right) while the victims on foot could “also be foreign, Belgian or British”.
The mayor of the hamlet of Bedar where the victims were found, Ángel Francisco Collado, assured that “some residents had advised the group of nine people (who fled on foot) to take refuge in their homes”.
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“They didn’t listen to them and seven of them died, and two others are on their way to the hospital,” he continued.
Several hundred people were evacuated, and nearly 500 firefighters and soldiers were deployed to fight this fire, helped by around twenty aerial vehicles.
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“Perfect fuel”
“Immense sadness and desolation at the terrible consequences of the fire affecting the province of Almería,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez reacted on X, while the King and Queen of Spain observed a minute of silence during a ceremony for the end of Princess Leonor’s military training.
The authorities and firefighters are watching the weather very closely, fearing a fatal change in the direction of the wind which could cause the flames to flare up again.
“We actually knew that this summer would be one of the most difficult, and it will be,” lamented Juan Manuel Moreno.
“In Spain and Andalusia in particular, the heavy rains that we had in winter led to a growth in the spring of the undergrowth, of the brush, which, with the heat waves, dried out and became perfect fuel for fires.”
A country on the front line of global warming, Spain has experienced increasingly long heat waves in recent years, starting in spring and then in summer, with temperatures sometimes exceeding 40°C, creating the conditions for devastating fires.
In 2025, more than 393,000 hectares were ravaged by flames in Spain, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), the worst fires in the country’s recent history.
In these fires, more than 8,000 in total, eight people were killed, 86 injured and more than 42,000 evacuated, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
Since the start of 2026, more than 61,000 hectares have already burned in Spain, according to Effis.
