By Loyola Perez de Villegas Muniz and Emma Pinedo
LOS GALLARDOS, Spain, July 10 (Reuters) - At least 12 people died attempting to flee a wildfire in southern Spain and 23 were missing, officials said on Friday, as firefighters battled to bring one of the country's deadliest blazes on record under control.
One Spaniard was among the victims and the rest appeared to be foreign nationals who ignored instructions to shelter in place, trying instead to flee by car as flames spread rapidly through a wooded
area around the town of Los Gallardos in Almeria province, said Antonio Sanz, head of emergencies in the Andalusia region.
The area is a popular holiday destination and home to many foreigners, especially the French, Britons and Belgians.
Four people, who appeared to be British because the steering wheel of their car was on the right-hand side, died in one vehicle, he said. Eight others were found dead after apparently abandoning their cars and attempting to escape on foot along a route that was not part of the evacuation plan. Many of the charred corpses still had to be identified through DNA testing, he said.
"The fire spread like gunpowder," Juan Manuel Moreno, the regional leader of Andalusia, told reporters, calling the blaze "one of the quickest and most complex we've seen".
Moreno added that the blaze had so far ravaged 3,200 hectares (7,900 acres) and stronger winds were expected later on Friday.
Some of those missing were probably hikers caught off guard in the woods, he said. Rescue workers found several walking sticks at the scene.
The circumstances resemble those in neighbouring Portugal in June 2017, when a huge wildfire during a heatwave killed more than 60 people, with half of the victims burned to death in their cars.
EARLY START TO SPAIN'S WILDFIRE SEASON
A series of early summer heatwaves has left large parts of Spain parched and vulnerable to any spark, fuelling an early start to wildfire season.
So far this year, about 57,000 hectares have burned, about half the annual average for the past two decades and making up 40% of all the area burned in the European Union, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
"We usually don't see these fires until August. They’re starting earlier now because the vegetation dries out sooner," Roman Garcia, a forest firefighter from Salamanca, said on state broadcaster TVE.
A record heatwave last August provoked the worst wildfire season in three decades, charring 330,000 hectares, an area twice the size of London.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez acknowledged at the time that wildfire prevention had been "clearly insufficient" and forestry management inadequate, pledging to do "whatever it takes" to ensure fires on such a scale never happened again.
Sanchez on Friday offered his condolences to the families of the victims and said he felt "enormous sadness and devastation".
As authorities sought to identify the dead and track down the missing, anxious relatives from around the world posted messages on social media and local forums.
One woman said her daughter, who was driving a red Ford Fiesta and had her dog with her, was missing. Another person from the United States said her brother had been among a group of 10 people who tried to escape through a valley next to a stream.
The fire was believed to have been sparked by a broken power cable that fell into a ditch next to a road and moved at a speed of 15 kilometres (9.32 miles) in two hours, Moreno said. However, a spokesperson for utility company Endesa contradicted that by saying that the cable carried no voltage.
The death toll already surpasses that of 2005, when 11 firefighters were killed in a blaze in the central province of Guadalajara that was sparked by a barbecue.
Moreno warned that Spain faced a particularly challenging wildfire season, after abundant winter rainfall spurred heavy plant growth, which had dried out to become ideal fuel for fires.
“There's still a long summer ahead,” he said.
(Reporting by Loyola Perez de Villegas Muniz in Los Gallardos, Emma Pinedo, Corina Pons, David Latona in Madrid, Akanksha Khushi in BengaluruWriting by Charlie Devereux Editing by Aislinn Laing, Ros Russell, Andrei Khalip)
