San Francisco Frontiers - France's largest wildfire in decades 'under control', says minister

"The fire in under control, it's no longer progressing," Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said, however adding the fire was still active in some areas.

France has for weeks been battling wildfires after a series of deadly heatwaves that have dried up riverbeds and vegetation, extreme weather events scientists have linked to human-made climate change.

In the Gironde region near the winemaking capital of Bordeaux, an inferno has ripped through 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres) of pine forest along the Atlantic coastline -- an area larger than the US city of Detroit. It has also destroyed around 240 homes.

Inhabitants allege a brushwood-clearing machine accidentally started the blaze with a spark on Wednesday last week.

Sophie Brocas, the prefect of the southwestern Gironde region, said on Friday evening that the region was "coming up for air" after more than a week of water-bombing aircraft supporting firefighters and volunteers relentlessly seeking to put out the blaze.

Most of the 220,000 people who had been evacuated from the flames had gone home, she said.

Nunez however added that some would have to wait for the fire to be put out in the areas where it was still active.

- Most land burnt in years -

In southeastern France, firefighters had overnight managed to stem the advance of a fast-moving blaze that started on Friday in the Var region.

Strong winds fanned the flames, causing them to spread "faster than a galloping horse", according to regional prefect Simon Babre.

But on Saturday morning he reported no new progression.

The fire was just the latest of several that have consumed 5,600 hectares of land in total in the Var region in July, one of which caused Hollywood star George Clooney, his wife Amal and children to flee their home earlier this week.

Elsewhere in France, a fire in the Fontainebleau forest near Paris incinerated a tenth of the UNESCO-listed site in mid-July, after several other wildfires in the country.

The wildfire near Bordeaux is the largest nationwide since a deadly forest fire in the same region in 1949, which scorched around 50,000 hectares.

The total area of land burnt so far this year in France -- 92,000 hectares -- is the largest on record for any year over the past 20 years, according to satellite data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

burs-ah/giv

G.Collins--SFF