Death toll from southern Spain wildfire rises to 13, blaze stabilized

MADRID - The death toll from a wildfire in Spain's southeastern province of Almeria rose to 13 while regional authorities announced Sunday that the blaze had been stabilized.

Seven injured people remained hospitalized, three of them in serious condition, showed the latest official data.

According to Spain's public broadcaster RTVE, many of those affected by the fire are foreign nationals.

The wildfire broke out on Thursday near the Los Gallardos municipality in Almeria, part of the autonomous community of Andalusia in southern Spain, and had burned through around 7,000 hectares of land.

Ten people officially registered as missing remained unaccounted for.

Regional authorities said the stabilization of the fire has allowed them to lower the level of emergency response and authorize the remaining roughly 1,000 evacuees to return to their homes, after about 600 residents were allowed back on Saturday.

The cause of the wildfire remained under investigation. The main hypothesis is that it may have been triggered by the collapse of an electricity pole or cable.

Juanma Moreno, head of the regional government of Andalusia, said Sunday that the wildfire was no longer advancing and had been contained within its perimeter, while cautioning that further work was needed before the blaze could be declared fully controlled and extinguished.

Moreno said the fire was the most serious in Andalusia's recent history and urged both the public and authorities to take climate change "very seriously."

He noted that climate change was creating increasingly complex conditions and wildfires of unprecedented size that were becoming ever more difficult to tackle.