Wildfires rage in Europe from Croatia to Portugal

About a dozen wildfires had broken out late Sunday in the villages surrounding Split, a popular tourist destination, but firefighters managed to control the blaze on the outskirts of Croatia's second largest city.

Late Monday the fire spread to the suburbs of Split where a shopping centre had to be evacuated and several cars were burned. The city waste dump caught fire, while the town was covered with thick black smoke, but the blaze was put under control overnight.

"It seems that the worst is behind us ... Split has been saved," mayor Andro Krstulovic Opara told HRT state-run television.

Local media reports however said some parts of Split were without electricity or water on Tuesday as Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic arrived to take stock of the situation. According to initial estimates some 4,500 hectares (11,120 acres) of land, mostly pine forests, bushes and olive groves, were destroyed. Houses were burned but there were no casualties.

In neighbouring Montenegro, where the forest fires forced the evacuation of more than a hundred campers on the Lustica peninsula, the situation was slightly better Tuesday.

Fires however were still active in several municipalities further inland but were all under control, an interior ministry statement said.

The cause of the fires in the two countries at the height of the summer tourist season is still not known.

In Italy, authorities said a blaze in a pine forest at a popular park outside Rome, now under control, was deliberately set and that a suspect has been arrested.