PARIS, France (AFP)—Two children were found dead in a car in France on Monday as much of Europe sweltered through record high temperatures and national authorities launched urgent measures to reduce the impact.

The youngsters, aged two and four, were found in their family car in a residential parking lot in the southern town of Carpentras, where investigators said they believed the heatwave was the most likely reason for the deaths.

The latest heatwave to hit Europe has seen outdoor events cancelled, transport disrupted, schools shut and office workers told to work from home, as the authorities issued health alerts to protect the elderly and vulnerable.

Scientists have shown that recurring heatwaves are a clear marker of global warming, and warn they are set to become more frequent, longer and more intense.

France’s average temperature broke a record for the month of June, forecaster Meteo-France said, as the country closed over 1,350 schools due to the extreme heat.

Average daytime and nighttime temperatures reached 29.2C, beating the previous high reached on June 30, 2025, according to provisional data.

Meteo-France expanded its heatwave red alert to more than half of France’s departments, affecting some 39 million people.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu was scheduled to hold a crisis meeting on Tuesday, an aide said.

In the Spanish capital Madrid, where temperatures peaked at 40C on Monday, the city hall set up a “climate refuge” for homeless and vulnerable people, open between midday and 8:00 pm, which provides water, food, and hygiene facilities.

“Overwhelming, very overwhelming. For someone who is not used to being in the street, going without a shower, without food, it is a little bit tough. The heat outside is very intense,” Camilo, a homeless person using the facility, told regional television channel TeleMadrid.

In the southern tourist hotspot of Cordoba, where temperatures reached 40C, some streets were practically deserted, while people shielded themselves with umbrellas or slurped ice cream to keep themselves cool.

“It feels horrendous,” Clarisa Arismendi, a 38-year-old doctor from Mexico, told AFP. “The heat right now is really, really, really bad.”

– Britain heat warning –

The French government’s emergency response cell warned people not to try to cool off in unsupervised water areas such as lakes and rivers, after 13 people died by drowning at the weekend.

In Germany, police said five people had died in fatal swimming accidents over the weekend.

Britain’s Met Office issued a rare red warning for extreme heat — the national weather agency’s highest alert level, indicating risk to life and the possibility of major infrastructure such as roads and railways being closed.

It was only the second time the Met Office has issued such a warning, with temperatures in the shade expected to rise as high as 40C on Wednesday and Thursday.

The warning runs from 9:00 am (0800 GMT) on Wednesday to 9:00 pm on Thursday and covers a large area of central and southern England, including London and Birmingham, the UK’s two largest cities.

Schools in southwest England said they were planning to finish the day early, and a train company said it was cancelling or changing some of its services out of London because of the “severe weather”.

Akshay Deoras, a senior researcher at the University of Reading’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science, in England, said it was clear what was behind the rash of heat records.

“Human-driven climate change has provided the springboard for this event, loading the atmosphere with extra heat and making extreme temperatures far more intense than they would have been in the past,” he said.

– Schoolchildren sick –

In France, the temperature was forecast to climb up to 43C in the southwestern city of Bordeaux and 39C in the capital Paris, said Meteo-France.

One mother in Paris, Gaelle Roubere, told AFP emergency services had to be called when some pupils in her child’s school fell ill in the heat.

“There was vomiting, nausea,” she said, speaking in front of the school, where banners had been hung in the windows with messages such as: “38C in classrooms is TOO HOT!”

“With this intense heat at the moment, it’s tricky. You really have to protect yourself from the sun,” nurse Mamone Outhaithany, 31, told AFP in the southern city of Marseille.

“You need to stay hydrated, otherwise you don’t feel well.”