France's largest wildfire in decades, which began on Tuesday in the southern Aude department, has been brought under control after days of devastation.
The blaze, which officials linked to climate change and prolonged drought, killed one person, injured at least 13 people, 11 of them firefighters, and destroyed thousands of hectares of land.
Around 2,000 firefighters were mobilised to contain the wildfire, and on Thursday, August 7, Lucie Roesch, secretary general of the Aude prefecture, announced, "The fire is under control."
The announcement came after regional authorities in Spain said late Wednesday that a wildfire near the Mediterranean tourist town of Tarifa, which had prompted evacuations, had been stabilised.
Firefighters on the scene in the Aude department called it a "classic job but on an extraordinary scale", saying the day was spent dealing with the remaining active pockets of fire.
"The objective is to stabilise the fire" and halt its progress by the end of the day, said Christophe Magny, chief of the Aude department's firefighter unit.
According to the authorities in the nearby city of Narbonne, the fire advanced much slower overnight to Thursday than at the start, when it engulfed around 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) per hour.
Weather conditions had become more favourable after two days of strong and changing winds that made the blaze's progress difficult to predict.
However, the fire will not be "declared extinguished for several days", said Christian Pouget, prefect of the Aude department. "There is still a lot of work to be done."
The fire is France's biggest so far in a summer that has already seen around 9,000 fires, mainly along the Mediterranean coast.
