The fire broke out on Saturday in the municipality of Pedrogao Grande in central Portugal, before spreading fast across several fronts.

On Sunday afternoon, nearly 900 firefighters and 300 vehicles were still battling the blaze as scenes of devastation could be seen around the town.

“Unfortunately, this seems to be the greatest tragedy we have seen in recent years in terms of forest fires,” said a visibly moved Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who declared three days of mourning starting on Sunday.

The flowing expanse of hills situated between Pedrogao Grande, Figueiro do Vinhos to the west and Castanheira de Pera to the north, which 24 hours before had glowed bright green with eucalyptus plants and pine trees, were completely gutted by the flames.

A thick layer of white smoke hovered over either side of a national motorway for a distance of about 20 kilometres (12 miles), as blackened trees leaned listlessly over charred soil.

A burnt-out car sat outside partly destroyed and abandoned houses, while a few metres away police in face masks surrounded the corpse of a man hidden under a white sheet.

Secretary of State for the Interior Jorge Gomes said 62 people burned to death, mostly trapped in their cars engulfed by flames in the Leiria region.

“It is difficult to say if they were fleeing the flames or were taken by surprise,” he said.

More than 50 people were injured, five critically, including one child and four firefighters.

“The number of fatalities could still rise,” Costa said. “The priority now is to save those people who could still be in danger.”

‘Fire raging on four fronts’

The European Union said it would provide firefighting planes following a request from Lisbon.

“France has offered three planes through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and they will be quickly sent to assist the local emergency efforts,” EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides said.

Portugal was sweltering under a severe heatwave over the weekend, with temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in several regions.

About 60 forest fires broke out across the country during the night, with around 1,700 firefighters battling to put them out.

“The fire is still raging on four fronts,” Gomes said, two spreading “violently”.

Dry thunderstorms were thought to have been the cause, according to the prime minister.

A number of villages were affected by the main fire and homes were evacuated. Some were sheltered in neighbouring areas.

Officials were not immediately able to comment on the extent of the damage.

Spain dispatched two water-bombing planes on Sunday to aid the Portuguese fire service, Costa said.

‘Didn’t want to die in their homes’

Dozens of people who fled their homes were taken in by residents of the nearby municipality of Ansiao.

“There are people who arrived saying they didn’t want to die in their homes, which were surrounded by flames,” Ansiao resident Ricardo Tristao told reporters.

President Marcelo Rebelo went to the Leiria region to meet families of the victims, saying he was “sharing their pain in the name of all the Portuguese people”.

Firefighters did “all they could” when faced with the blaze, he said.

Pope Francis began his Angelus prayer by invoking the tragedy.

“I express my closeness to the beloved people of Portugal following the devastating fire,” Francis said. “Let’s pray in silence”.

Portugal was hit by a series of fires last year which devastated more than 100,000 hectares (1,000 square kilometres) of the mainland.

Fires on the tourist island of Madeira in August killed three people, while over the course of 2016 around 40 homes were destroyed and 5,400 hectares of land burned.

“We know that at least 30 people have died as a result of this fire… I do believe the number will increase,” police commander Stuart Cundy told reporters in front of the charred Grenfell Tower.

Cundy said police had started a criminal investigation but there was nothing to suggest “that the fire had been started deliberately”.

He also said the last flames had finally been put out, two days after the fire broke out in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday in the 24-storey tower in a working-class enclave of the wealthy London borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

More than 70 people are unaccounted for, according to media reports, although it was not known whether some of those were among the bodies recovered so far.

Police have warned some of the victims may never be identified because of the state of the remains.

Cundy said one of the victims was a person who died in hospital. Twenty-four injured survivors are still being treated, 12 of them in critical care.

Firefighters were using drones and sniffer dogs to search the building, saying that some of the upper floors are still inaccessible to humans because of concerns about the stability of the structure.

– Queen visits survivors –

The area surrounding the council-owned tower has been plastered by desperate relatives with pictures of the missing, from grandparents to young children, and large numbers of volunteers were assisting survivors.

Queen Elizabeth II and her grandson Prince William visited a community centre where some of the survivors are being housed, as anger grows among local residents about allegations that fire safety concerns were ignored for years.

The government has ordered a judge-led inquiry into Wednesday’s disaster, which is under pressure to act quickly.

“Something’s gone wrong here, something’s gone drastically wrong,” Communities and Local Government Minister Sajid Javid told BBC radio.

Javid said inspections of similar buildings had been ordered, with particular attention to the modern cladding used to beautify and add an insulation layer to ageing concrete and steel structures.

“We need to do whatever it takes to make people that live in those properties safe: that’s either make the properties safe or find some other accommodation, it has to be done,” he said, adding that survivors from the tower would be re-housed in the local area.

Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called for houses in the area to be “requisitioned” for survivors.

 – Acclaimed artist –

British photographer Khadija Saye, 24, who recently had her work shown at the Venice Biennale, was named on Friday as one of the victims.

“May you rest in peace Khadija Saye. God bless your beautiful soul. My heart breaks today. I mourn the tragic loss of a wonderful young woman,” said David Lammy, an MP who knew her.

Her work at the Venice Biennale was in the Diaspora Pavilion and was devoted to Gambian spiritual practices.

“It’s been a real journey, tears shed, highs and lows, but mama, I’m an artist exhibiting at the Venice Biennale and the blessings are abundant!” she said on Facebook.

– Syrian refugee student –

Syrian refugee Mohammed Alhajali, a civil engineering student who wanted to help rebuild his war-torn homeland one day, was the first victim named.

“Mohammed undertook a dangerous journey to flee war and death in Syria, only to meet it here in the UK, in his own home. Mohammed came to this country for safety and the UK failed to protect him,” the Syria Solidarity Campaign group said in a statement.

Alhajali, who lived on the 14th floor, was in his flat with his brother Omar when the fire broke out.

The two were separated during the chaotic evacuation of the building and only Omar survived.

The two had come to Britain in 2014.

THE MISSING:

– ‘Tell sons I love them’ –

Great-grandad Tony Disson, 65, made a series of phonecalls from his flat, saying he was trapped in his bathroom.

The ex-market trader’s phone stopped responding around 4:00am (0300 GMT) after he told a friend to “tell my sons I love them”, according to The Sun newspaper.

Eldest son Lee, 47, posted a Facebook message reading: “If anyone has seen my dad, Tony Disson, could they let us know. My heart goes out to all the people at Grenfell Tower.”

– Six-month-old girl –

Farah Hamdan, her husband Omar Belkadi and their six-month-old daughter are still unaccounted for, according to Farah’s father, Rkia.

“We’ve been to all the hospitals and we’ve been searching all day but we still haven’t found them. We just want to know they are safe,” he told The Sun.

The couple’s two other daughters, aged six and seven, were eventually found in hospital.

– Italian architects –

Italian couple Marco Gottardi, 27, and Gloria Trevisan, 27, were both missing, feared dead, according to one of their fathers.

The two architects had moved to London three months ago for work.

“At the moment there are two of our citizens who are confirmed as missing,” an Italian foreign ministry official told AFP.

An Italian newspaper, Il Mattino di Padova, said Gottardi had been on phone with his father and told him the smoke was rising before the line suddenly cut.

The paper said the couple lived on the 23rd floor.

– Business graduate –

Mariem Elgwahry, 27, lived on the 19th floor, where she is reported to have lived with mother Suhar.

Family and friends told The Independent newspaper that they had searched local hospitals, but had found neither women.

Elgwahry’s online profile said she was a senior marketing manager at cashback website Quidco, having graduated from the University of Roehampton in 2011 with a degree in business management.

– ‘Very, very scared’ –

Jessica Urbano, 12, has not been traced since talking to her aunt Sandra Ruiz at around 1:40am.

“She was with a group of people in the fire escape, in the fire stairs, they live on the 20th floor,” said Ruiz, while appealing for information.

“She would have been in her bed clothes and she will be very, very, very scared. We’re just desperate to find her.”

– Oldest missing person –

Sheila Smith, 84, is the oldest of those to be declared missing so far.

Her son Adam, who describes himself as a tech entrepreneur, launched an appeal on Twitter, writing “my Mum is missing — Sheila, 84 years old, 16th floor Grenfell Tower.”

– Desperate appeal –

Rania Ibrham, 30, uploaded a distressing Facebook Live video as she pleaded for help from a smoke-filled corridor before going back into her flat. She has not been contactable since.

FEARS are rising in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam about food and social insecurity caused by hydropower dams and water-diversion projects planned or already started further upstream.

The delta has an extensive system of canals and green paddy fields that stretches for kilometres, creating a part of the world that seems blessed with abundance like a virtual Garden of Eden. Local people are down-to-earth, but troubled by the increasingly frequent and serious saltwater intrusion, which destroys their crops, while the riverbanks and seashore are eroding at an alarming rate.

One farmer in Kien Giang province, who asked to be known just as “Tron”, told reporters on a recent field trip that her farm was threatened by saltwater intrusion and erosion every year – and the problems seemed to be getting worse.

“Last year I had to replant almost all of the starfruit trees in my orchard, because the saltwater encroached deep into the river in the dry season and killed most of my fruit trees,” Tron said, pointing to a line of small trees behind a bamboo fence.

“The saltwater also affected my paddy field and significantly reduced the rice yield.”

Damage from saltwater intrusion has slashed her family’s income from around US$5,000 (Bt170,000) annually in a normal year to just $1,000, which was not enough to feed the whole family, as she was responsible for her elderly mother and four children.

“I don’t know what to do now. I have to spend more money to save my farm for the next dry season by digging a groundwater well. Also, I have to fix the embankment in front of my home, as the river is widening, eroding more riverbank every year as well,” she said.

River basin management expert and lecturer at Can Tho University Nguyen Nhan Quang said food security and the well-being of people in the delta were at stake, as upstream projects were causing devastating impacts on Vietnam’s rice basket and the damage was intensifying.

Nguyen said the dams upriver were blocking the flow of sediment to the delta and contributing to shoreline erosion along the coast, while water-diversion projects would cut the amount of freshwater and increase saltwater intrusion.

“Vietnam has already experienced serious impacts from the development projects upriver and the situation tends to get worse to the point where it is damaging the main food source and people’s livelihoods can’t be ensured, as more projects such as the Pak Beng Dam and the Khong-Loei-Chi-Mun water-diversion project are progressing,” he said.

“Vietnam is the farthest downstream country, so we will see the most impact from developments upriver, as water quantity, water quality and sediment flow will change drastically and harm the economy of the region, which is based on agriculture and fisheries.”

The Mekong Delta has a population of at least 17.4 million people, nearly 20 per cent of Vietnam’s population, according to a census in 2013. But the fertile region produces 53 per cent of the country’s rice, 78 per cent of its fruit and 80 per cent of its freshwater fish, said Le Anh Tuan, head of the Delta Research and Global Observation Network Institute.

“The delta is facing double trouble from the impact of development projects upstream and threats from climate change. These seriously jeopardise food security, violate people’s rights and cause social disorder,” Le said.

“How can humanity achieve its sustainable development goals if we allow such harm to jeopardise the social security of the people?”

In Thailand, deputy head of the Royal Irrigation Department (RID) Somkiat Prachamwong said he could understand how people in Vietnam would be worried about projects upstream. But he added that the Khong-Loei-Chi-Mun water diversion project would not have a significant impact on the lower Mekong, as there would be a proper Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) on the project.

“We already finished a feasibility study for the project in April and right now we are going to conduct an EIA. Then after the EIA is approved, we shall submit the project to the Mekong River Commission to start the Prior Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement process,” Somkiat said.

He added that the project would not cause a water shortage downstream, as it would mostly operate in the rainy season. Moreover, the water levels of the Mekong were already regulated by Chinese dams and there was more water flowing in the dry season.

The Khong-Loei-Chi-Mun project aims to increase the irrigated area in Thailand’s Northeast by up to 1.58 million rai (250,000 hectares) by diverting water from the Mekong through the Loei River and then via irrigation canals across the region.

Meanwhile in Laos, many hydro projects are progressing rapidly. The Xayaburi Dam, the first dam on the lower Mekong, is 70 per cent complete and due to start operating in 2019. A second dam, the Don Sahong, is also under construction and already 25 per cent finished. A third dam at Pak Beng is due to finish the consultation process next week. The Lao government and proponents of the dams say they were designed with an environmentally friendly sediment flush system to help boost the flow of sediment downstream.

Nevertheless, Nguyen said states in the river basin were still focusing on benefits for their own countries and ignoring negative impacts that their neighbours downstream would endure.

“We have to be sincere in working with our neighbours in order to assure sustainable development for us all, otherwise we will kill the Mekong River and endanger millions of people along its banks,” he said.

 London Fire Brigade chief Dany Cotton said there had been “a number of fatalities” in what she called an “unprecedented” blaze.

“I cannot confirm the number at this time due to the size and complexity of this building,” she told reporters at the scene in west London.

“This is an unprecedented incident. In my 29 years of being a firefighter, I have never ever seen anything of this scale,” she said.

The ambulance service said 50 people had been hospitalised.

Witnesses said they had seen some people fall or jump from the stricken Grenfell Tower and at least one resident waving a piece of white cloth from one of the upper floors as flames ravaged the building.

The alarm was raised just before 1:00 am (0000 GMT) and within an hour flames had engulfed the entire block, which contains 120 flats.

Residents said the fire was on the exterior of the tower, which had been covered in cladding in a major refurbishment completed last year.

Nearly 10 hours on, flames could still be seen inside the charred building as a thick, black smoke filled the sky.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said firefighters were only able to reach the 12th floor at the height of the blaze during the night.

“A lot of people are unaccounted for,” he told Sky News television.

Cotton said the building’s structural integrity was being monitored and it was stable enough for fire crews to work inside.

“We rescued a large number of people from inside the building very early on,” she said, adding that she had spoken to firefighters who had reached the 19th and 20th floors.

“We are making steady progress.”

Large pieces of debris could be seen falling from the building, a 1970s local authority-built block in the working-class north Kensington area.

Mall operator Cathay Organisation said they could not change the advertisement because it is owned by rally organisers Pink Dot, but would pass on the message.

Cathay Cineleisure, a mall in the popular Orchard Road shopping district, was asked last week by an advertising watchdog to remove the words “supporting the freedom to love” from an advertisement prominently displayed on an escalator.

It is promoting the Pink Dot gay pride rally on July 1.

“As an entertainment company, we have always believed in an all-inclusive society where there is a place for everyone to call home,” a Cathay spokesperson told AFP.

“We hope to inspire people to embrace the values of equality where one can live and love freely.”

In a statement posted on their Facebook page, Pink Dot organisers said it was promoting a message of “inclusion and diversity”, in line with placing the family as the basic unit of society.

“We are confident Singaporeans are able to discern our message of inclusion, diversity and love from one that seeks to divide us because of differences,” Pink Dot said.

It said it was open to a discussion with the non-governmental watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore (ASAS) about the ad.

Asked by AFP for comment, ASAS said it would respond “in due course”.

Singapore’s Pink Dot rally started in 2009 and has attracted crowds of up to 28,000 despite a backlash from conservative groups in a state where protests are strictly controlled.

This year’s edition has run into several roadblocks after authorities banned foreign companies from sponsoring the rally.

Multinationals led by Facebook, Google and Goldman Sachs had funded previous editions.

Local companies have stepped in and provided support but under new protest rules, foreigners will be banned from the rally.

Open support for gay rights has grown in recent years. But Singapore’s top court in 2014 upheld a law dating back to British colonial rule that criminalises sex between men.