The largest fire was the one near Trogir, a historic town popular with tourists, which broke out late Friday at a rubbish dump and spread to nearby pine forests and prairies dried out by a heat wave.

Firefighting planes water-bombed the area as 17 units of firefighters battled the flames overnight. Some 100 firefighters and 30 vehicles were still at the scene by Saturday afternoon, said national rescue service DUZS.

Three other fires also broke out around the nearby city of Split on the central Croatian coast, engulfing more than 500 hectares, but firefighters managed to extinguish them or bring them under control.

Fires also burned nearly 200 hectares near the central coastal town of Sibenik and 25 hectares near the city of Dubrovnik, a blaze that also crossed the southern border into Bosnia.

Croatia has been hit by dozens of fires that have burned several thousand hectares along the scenic coastline since July.

The start of a heatwave that was set to send temperatures in the area soaring to 40 degrees Celsius (104F) this weekend was complicating the task of 200 firefighters battling to bring the blaze under control.

The fire started on Thursday afternoon in the area between the inland town of Lacanau and the spectacular Atlantic beaches that are this week hosting the Lacanau Surf Pro event featuring some of the world's top surfers.

Four Canadair waterbombers were deployed from dawn in an attempt to stop the fire spreading further.

To date only five residences have had to be evacuated but local authorities have taken the preventative step of temporarily banning the public from all wooded areas in the Gironde department.

A cigarette butt dropped from a car on Thursday is thought to have started the blaze.

The Landes forest, which spreads across the Gironde and the neighbouring departments of Landes and Lot and Garonne, is the largest maritime pine forest in Europe.

French authorities have issued a health alert for several regions this weekend after forecasters predicted unusually high temperatures in the southwest and centre of the country.

An unexpected and sustained heatwave in the first two weeks of August 2003 left an estimated 15,000 mostly elderly people dead.