Hundreds of people have had to leave their homes in Norway as emergency services try to extinguish forest fires raging in the south of the country. Some 148 homes were evacuated around the town of Sokndal, where fires have been burning since Tuesday.

Police say the fires are still out of control and warn that heavy winds could help them to spread. April is very early for forest fires in Norway, and experts have warned of a dramatic increase across the continent. This month alone, wildfires have broken out in Sweden, Germany and the UK.

Fires in Europe “are way above the average” for this time of year, an official at the EU’s European Forest Fire Information System (Effis) told the BBC. “The season is drastically worse than those of the last decade.” The official added that a “very dry winter in most of Europe” and persistent drought had contributed to the rise in forest fires, and that the “long term forecast is not promising for an improvement”.(BBC)…[+]