One Ukrainian soldier died and two others were injured in forest fires in Ukraine's eastern Lugansk region, near the front line of the country's war with Moscow-backed separatists, authorities said Thursday.

The soldiers were evacuating equipment and weapons from the blaze, Oleksandr Motuzanyk, a spokesman for the defence ministry told AFP.

The fire spread over 500 hectares (1,235 acres) to the neighbouring Kharkiv region, where about 20 houses were destroyed and more than 30 people evacuated, according to the interior ministry.

The fire broke out after temperatures in Ukraine soared for several days in a row.

The authorities have dispatched more than 500 rescue workers and firemen, two water-bombing planes and a helicopter to tackle the fires in both regions, emergency services said Thursday.

Forest fires in the Lugansk region killed five people and injured about 30 others in July.

Ukraine has been hit by heat waves this year, which may have encouraged the fires to start and made them more difficult to control.

Scientific models predict that changes in climate will increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, like catastrophic fires or devastating hurricanes.

Spring wildfires earlier this year ravaged more than 66,000 hectares in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, scene of one of the world's worst nuclear accidents in 1986.

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Forest and Wild Fires - News, Science and Technology

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