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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Tim Hanlon

At least 10 passengers suffered burns fleeing train caught in ferocious Spain wildfire

At least 10 passengers have been injured as they tried to flee a train in Spain that was forced to stop as huge flames from wildfire closed in.

Dramatic footage from a traveller sitting on the train shows the sky full of flames and smoke as the fire spread rapidly out of control.

The train was heading from Valencia to Zaragoza in the north east of Spain when the encroaching flames forced it to a halt in the Bejis municipality.

While the driver of the train asked passengers to remain on board, some are believed to have panicked as they saw the flames get ever closer.

There were 48 people on board the train, that had set off from Valencia on Thursday afternoon, and some broke windows to get off the train.

Massive flames can be seen lighting up the sky from the wildfire (Twitter)
Some people on the train decided to flee despite the driver telling them to stay on board (Twitter)

At least 10 of the passengers who left the train were injured, including three who were seriously hurt from burns.

The train driver went on to reverse it back from the danger area to a station at Caudiel and nobody who had stayed on board were injured.

Those who had left the train also made it back to Caudiel where some received treatment.

Of those who were hurt, the most serious was a 58-year-old woman and a 15-year-old girl who were airlifted to hospital in Valencia, it is reported.

At least 10 people were injured with burns when they left the train (BIEL ALINO/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Firefighters have been battling wildfire in the Valencia region this week and several had a brush with death as they tried to prevent the flames from reaching villages in Bejis.

A cry of "run, run, run, run" rang out across the hillside as a wall of flame fed by high winds swept down towards four Spanish firefighters, engulfing tinder-dry bracken seconds after they fled for their lives.

Three firefighters were injured by flames and several villages in the area were evacuated, local emergency services said on Twitter.

A car can be seen burnt out by the wildfire around Bejis (DOMENECH CASTELLO/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Climate change has left parts of the Iberian peninsula at their driest in 1,200 years, according to a study published last month in the Nature Geoscience journal.

In neighbouring Portugal, more than 1,200 firefighters and nine waterbombing aircraft were battling a wildfire that has ravaged the Serra da Estrela national park and burned more than 17,000 hectares since it began on August 6.

On Tuesday, smoke from that fire enveloped skyscrapers in Madrid, more than 250 miles away.

So far this year, wildfires have already burned more than 275,000 hectares in Spain and 87,000 in Portugal, with the latter representing around 1% of Portuguese territory, the highest percentage in the European Union.

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