A man has died after being run over by a bulldozer he was operating while fighting wildfires in Portugal, bringing the death toll in the country to three, officials said.

A man was killed while helping fight wildfires that have been scorching Portugal, the country’s civil protection service said Wednesday, bringing the death toll from the fires to three. The man, who worked for a company hired to help the northern municipality of Mirandela fight the fires,

A heatwave is continuing to affect the Iberian Peninsula. Thousands of firefighters have been deployed to battle ongoing blazes and towns have been evacuated. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited affected regions to meet with the heads of emergency teams.

The fires have ravaged small, sparsely populated towns in the country's northwest, forcing locals in many cases to act as firefighters. About 2,382 square miles have burned across Spain and Portugal.

Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires.

Wildfires have ravaged more than 450,000 hectares of land across the Iberian peninsula since the start of the year, setting records in a region particularly hard hit by intensive heatwaves and drought affecting southern Europe.

Up to 20 major wildfires are burning in total, the majority in Spain's northwestern region of Galicia, while there are several blazes in neighbouring Portugal.