More than 5,000 personnel are battling a number of wildfires, the authorities said, and the prime minister called it an “extremely difficult weather situation.”

Thousands of firefighters tackling deadly wildfires in central and northern Portugal had largely doused the flames in the Aveiro district, one of the worst-hit, as of Thursday morning, and were focusing on a dozen blazes still raging elsewhere.

Portugal has declared a day of national mourning to mark the deaths of seven who died in wildfires that have burned through the country's west coast.