Some 300 firefighters spent a difficult night battling a huge wildfire in southeastern Spain that has burnt through nearly 10,000 hectares in an area notoriously difficult to access, officials said Tuesday.

The fire began when lightning hit the Vall de Ebo area in the province of Alicante late Saturday and it has since spread rapidly, fueled by strong winds, forcing the evacuation of more than 1,000 people, Valencia’s regional government said.

“It’s been a very complicated night,” regional interior minister Gabriela Bravo told Antena 3 television, saying some 300 firefighters were battling the flames, backed by 24 planes and helicopters.

“At the moment we are talking about more than 9,500 hectares burnt with a perimeter of 65 kilometers (40 miles),” regional president Ximo Puig said late Monday, describing the blaze as “absolutely huge.”

“It’s a very complicated situation… The fire is creating enormous difficulties that are absolutely impossible to tackle with the speed we would like.”

Firefighters elsewhere in the region were also battling two other wildfires north of Valencia city, with hundreds of firefighters and at least 10 firefighting planes engaged in the operation, officials said.

Further north, firefighters in the Aragon region were hoping to bring under control another major blaze that broke out Saturday that has burnt more than 6,000 hectares of land, forcing at least 1,500 people from their homes.

So far this year, Spain has suffered 391 wildfires, fueled by scorching temperatures and drought conditions, which have destroyed a total of 271,020 hectares of land, according to the latest figures from the European Forest Fire Information System.

This year’s fires in Spain have been particularly devastating, destroying more than three times the area consumed by wildfires in the whole of 2021, which amounted to 84,827 hectares, the figures show.

Scientists say human-induced climate change is making extreme weather events, including heatwaves and droughts, more frequent and intense. They in turn increase the risk of fires, which emit climate-heating greenhouse gases.

Fires have blazed across Europe, particularly in France, Greece and Portugal, making 2022 a record year for wildfires on the continent.

In Portugal, a wildfire brought under control last week reignited Tuesday in the UNESCO-designated Serra da Estrela natural park, the civil protection agency said.

Unusually high temperatures and a prolonged drought are affecting large swaths of China, reducing crop yields and drinking water supplies.

The lack of rain has been especially marked in the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, which encompasses a large area of mountains and rivers.

State media on Tuesday reported fire trucks were delivering water to outlying villages for drinking and irrigating crops.

Rainfall in Chongqing has been half of what is usually expected for the year and some smaller waterways have dried up entirely.

Authorities have issued warnings of temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). Many parts of China have broken records for high temperatures this year.

Amid the drought, other areas of China have been hit by flash floods, underscoring the effects of climate change on the vast nation of 1.4 billion people stretching from the mountains and deserts of Central Asia to the South China Sea.

The Chongqing drought has affected more than 600,000 people and 36,700 hectares (90,690 acres) of crops, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Neighboring Hubei province has also been badly hit, with some areas reporting the growing season a complete failure, Xinhua said.

World leaders will meet at the UN in New York later for more talks to save the world’s oceans from overexploitation.

The UN High Seas Treaty has been through 10 years of negotiations but has yet to be signed.

If agreed, it would put 30% of the world’s oceans into conservation areas by 2030.

Campaigners hope it will protect marine life from overfishing and other human activities.

Two-thirds of the world’s oceans are currently considered international waters, which mean all countries have a right to fish, ship and do research there. But only 1.2% of these high seas, as they are referred to, are protected.

This leaves the marine life living outside those areas at risk of exploitation from the increasing threats of overfishing and shipping traffic.

And with ecosystems in the high seas poorly documented, there is concern among conservationists that creatures could become extinct before they are discovered.

Research published earlier this year, and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, suggests that between 10% and 15% of marine species are already at risk of extinction.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has said at previous negotiations that the “traditional fragmented nature of ocean governance” has prevented the effective protection of the high seas.