A wildfire that reached Marseille is pushed back but not extinguished

MARSEILLE, France (AP) — A wildfire that reached France’s second-largest city and left around 300 people injured was stabilized but not yet extinguished Wednesday, authorities said. Marseille’s mayor lifted a confinement order for tens of thousands of people.

Mayor Benoit Payan said on broadcaster France-Info that the fire was in “net regression” on Wednesday morning after racing toward the historic Mediterranean port city Tuesday, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate and the population of an entire city district to barricade themselves indoors on official orders.

Spurred by hot summer winds, the fire grounded all flights to and from Marseille and halted train traffic in most of the surrounding area Tuesday. Train, road and plane traffic remained complicated Wednesday.

The prefecture, or local administration, said that 303 people sought treatment for smoke inhalation or other injuries, 24 of whom were hospitalized including residents, firefighters and police.

More than 1,000 firefighters were deployed to tackle the fire, which broke out near the town of Les Pennes-Mirabeau before advancing toward Marseille. Scores of homes were damaged or destroyed as well as warehouses and vehicles, and some 720 hectares of land were burned by the blaze, the prefecture said.

The prefecture described the fire as ’’particularly virulent.″ It came on a cloudless, windy day after a lengthy heat wave around Europe left the area parched and at heightened risk for wildfires. Several have broken out in southern France in recent days, including one in the Aude region that has burned some 2,000 hectares and continued to rage Wednesday.

Light gray smoke gave the sky over Marseille’s old port a dusty aspect as water-dropping planes tried to extinguish the fire in the outskirts of the city, which has some 900,000 inhabitants.

’’A fire that is stabilized is a fire that is no longer evolving,″ local authorities said in post on social networks Wednesday afternoon, noting that firefighters were still working to extinguish it.