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BERLIN — France saw around 1,000 additional deaths last week at the height of its record-smashing heat wave, the country’s public health agency said Sunday, as the head of the World Health Organization warned that Europe is now the fastest-warming continent and needs to do more to protect its citizens.

Temperature records were toppled in several countries on the weekend, wildfires were sparked in Germany, and Berlin police used water cannons to cool down the crowds.

Meanwhile, the heat wave slowly moved toward eastern parts of the continent.

Germany marked a new record for the third day in a row with 107 degrees Fahrenheit in Neißemünde, near the border with Poland, which baked under its new all-time high of 104.9 F. The Czech Republic also experienced its hottest day ever with 106.4 F.

A new study from the World Weather Attribution, a Europe-based collaboration of scientists, reported Friday that the record-breaking heat and humidity in Europe this past week would not have been possible without climate change.

The rapid study found that the heat would have been virtually impossible just five decades ago, and is 200 times more likely today than it would have been 20 years ago.

France records surge in deaths during heat wave

France reported a surge in deaths last week, including a sharp increase at private homes, especially in the Paris region, the national public health agency said Sunday.

There were more than 1,200 deaths on Wednesday, when France was sweltering under its hottest temperatures, increasing to more than 1,400 deaths on each of the two following days, Public Health France said. In April and May, before the heat wave, France’s rate of deaths was about 900 to 1,000 per day.

The agency concluded that France experienced a total of at least 1,000 additional deaths during those three days alone, an estimate it cautioned is likely to increase as more data is collected, including for deaths at home.

The increase was sharpest in areas under red warnings of extreme heat, it said. Those warnings blanketed about three-quarters of the country at the peak of the heat wave. The agency said that 85% of the deaths involved people aged 65 and above.

Europe is fastest-warming continent, WHO warns

“Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, heating at twice the global average,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday on X. “Right now 150 million people are living under extreme heat, hundreds have died, schools are shut, grids are buckling.”

Driven by climate change and global warming, the “once-in-a-generation” heat wave is now occurring nearly every year, Tedros said, adding that more than 1,300 excess deaths have been recorded since June 21 linked to high temperatures in Europe.

“Heat stress is often called the ‘silent killer’ — and European homes, workplaces, and schools were not built for these temperatures,” Tedros warned as he called on European countries to implement action plans. He said they should focus on preparedness, prevention, and stronger health system responses.

Lightning strikes Swedish theme park

In Sweden, several people were injured when they were hit by lightning at an amusement park, the country’s TT news agency reported.

Three adults were taken to the hospital, among them a woman with serious injuries, after the lightning struck the Tosselilla Sommarland park in Tomelilla in the south of the country.

Across Europe, the extreme heat has been followed by severe thunderstorms.

Denmark, which marked new temperature records on Saturday, recorded 1,156 lighting strikes by Sunday morning, according to public broadcaster DR.

Wildfires burn forests contaminated with WWII ammunition

In Gohrischheide, in eastern Germany, a fire broke out in a large forest that’s still contaminated with ammunition from World War II, which made the firefighters’ efforts even more complicated.

Similarly, a major firefighting operation was underway in southwest Germany near the village of Traisen, where the heat sparked a forest fire in an area that also contained unexploded ordnance. Firefighters had to be temporarily stop after explosions took place and an ordnance disposal unit was brought in to continuously assess the situation, German news agency dpa reported. Some 650 people in Traisen had to leave their homes Sunday afternoon because the fire continued to spread.

The big cities’ fire departments were busy sending out ambulances to people suffering from heat-related illnesses. In Berlin, an additional 500 ambulance dispatches were reported on Saturday, most of them heat-related.

Berlin police use water cannons to cool down locals. tourists

The German capital’s police found a way to help suffering Berliners and tourists alike. They put up two huge water cannons — usually used to disperse unruly protesters — in front of the city’s iconic Brandenburg Gate and sprayed the cool water across the cheering crowd.

The heat also continued to damage the country’s infrastructure, with the concrete surface on countless highways breaking up, and a weekend warning by national rail operator Deutsche Bahn to avoid all unnecessary train travel.

More than 600 passengers had to be evacuated from an overheated train in Brandenburg after a tree fell onto an overhead power line during a storm on Saturday evening. The train, which was on its way from Hamburg to Prague, lost power. The air conditioners stopped working and the doors were locked until emergency responders forced them open. Two people were hospitalized with heat-related problems, dpa reported.

In the eastern city of Leipzig, no trams will be running until early Monday morning due to heat damage to tracks and switches. The Leipzig Public Transportation Authority said that the high temperatures had caused the joint sealant for asphalt and concrete in switches and tracks to run and clump together in many places throughout the city’s network.

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — Tensions flared Saturday as desperation grew among anguished residents of the Venezuelan state of La Guaira, where rescuers and civilians searched for earthquake survivors amid a sharply rising death toll.

Venezuela’s government said the number of people killed rose to 1,430 Saturday morning and families reported at least 68,900 people missing, three days after the one-two punch of 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that devastated the South American nation.

Venezuelans looking for loved ones and neighbors used shovels, heavy equipment, ropes, and bare hands atop mounds of toppled concrete throughout La Guaira, one of the country’s hardest-hit states.

Most of those digging were civilians who took search efforts into their own hands, and tensions peaked over inadequate response from the Venezuelan government, whose soldiers, firefighters, police, and military cadets were evidently underprepared to respond to the tragedy.

Frustration was only amplified by state efforts to project the image of a robust state response.

“There’s a pile of bodies over there from last night. Newborn babies. Look what time it is, and they still haven’t come to recover them. At 8 p.m. there were people alive down there, and they haven’t bothered to rescue them. We’ve located several bodies, and they haven’t helped us recover them either,” said Mileidy Romero, who was among those searching the rubble in the seaside town of Caraballeada. “What are they waiting for?”

Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours as crucial for retrieving people alive, though that can be extended if they have access to food and water.

However, a growing number of international rescue teams were joining the effort to save lives nearly 72 hours after the quake.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez said on state television Saturday that more than 14,000 members of the military and police are patrolling the area, where access is now blocked and special permits are required to enter. More rescue teams sent by governments across the world arrived in Venezuela on Saturday.

Simón Bolívar International Airport, which serves Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, was badly damaged in the quake. One runway was operational on Saturday as U.S. teams worked to repair the crucial throughway, Jeremy Lewin, a senior State Department official in charge of foreign assistance, told reporters.

Government forces distributed food and water to survivors in La Guaira, and Rodríguez said her government was mounting a full response during these “critical hours for rescuing people alive.”

The disaster poses a huge challenge for Rodríguez, the former vice president who took office in January after the capture and removal of then-President Nicolás Maduro by the United States. Venezuela has been facing economic disarray for more than a decade, and many people reject the legitimacy of the political movement Rodríguez represents.

Search teams and foreign aid from Mexico, the U.S., Brazil, El Salvador, France, El Salvador, and more continued to arrive in Venezuela Saturday morning to bolster recovery efforts.

Lewin, the State Department official, said the U.S. military would help coordinate flights to bring in search and rescue workers, mobile hospitals, and supplies. He said two 80-person search teams were at work and a U.S. Navy transport ship was docked off the coast of Venezuela ready to receive airlifted survivors in need of medical attention. Lewin said it is a “race against the clock” to find people injured in the quakes.

“People are trapped under rubble, and the priority is to get the search and rescue teams and the medical professionals and others to them as quickly as possible to save lives,” he said.

The International Organization for Migration said up to 6.76 million people could be affected, some 2 million of them in Caracas alone. The destruction was amplified by the quick succession of shallow quakes, experts said.

Loyce Pace, the International Red Cross’ regional director for the Americas, said “people are still terrified to reenter what were their homes.”

Indeed, many continued to sleep on the street.

In the city of Maiquetia, people lined up outside stores and pharmacies that served them one by one behind closed doors. At one point a woman in a crowd threw herself to the ground to protect a package of diapers with her body, desperate to keep it.

Traffic and throngs of motorcyclists at times disrupted search efforts. Mexican soldiers and volunteers repeatedly asked for silence to try to hear signs of life under the rubble, but bikers — civilian and uniformed — continued to honk horns and rev engines, to the first responders’ frustration.

Yuleidy Cadenas, 28, stood across the street from a collapsed public housing building, hoping her son, mother, and brother would be pulled out alive.

She fled barefoot from another building as it collapsed Wednesday and found her mother’s 12-floor apartment tower had pancaked.

“I got on top of the rubble and told them to yell back, and nobody did, not my brother, nor my son, or my mother,” Cadenas said.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. struck Iran on Friday in response to a drone attack a day earlier on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s the most significant test yet to an interim understanding reached a week ago by the two countries to begin working to end their monthslong war and reopen the pivotal waterway.

U.S. President Donald Trump said the drone attack violated the ceasefire. The strikes came shortly after Trump told reporters, “You’ll find out” whether the U.S. would respond.

U.S. Central Command said the military struck missile and drone locations and coastal radar sites in Iran.

“I don’t like the fact that they took a shot yesterday, actually four of them,” Trump said at the White House shortly before the U.S. struck back. When asked why there would be strikes when Trump has insisted talks with Tehran are going well, Trump said of Iran: “They’re a little bit different.”

He then abruptly cut off questions and reporters were ushered out of his office.

Ebrahim Azizi, who heads the Iranian parliament’s national security commission, responded to Trump on social media earlier Friday, saying, “the Strait of Hormuz is governed by Iran, so: Respect the rules” and to “not mistake control for escalation.”

“This is not a violation of the ceasefire; it is ceasefire management,” Azizi wrote.

Friday evening, Vice President JD Vance said on social media that Iran should “pick up the phone” if there are disagreements about the ceasefire agreement.

“But violence will be met with violence,” Vance said.

Strikes conclude an hour later

The U.S. strikes on Iran concluded about an hour after U.S. Central Command announced the military action on social media, a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation told the Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing military operation.

The British military said on Thursday that a container ship was hit a by projectile off the coast of Oman, coming hours after Iran threatened vessels to stop using the route. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said no injuries were reported.

The development came during a fragile time for the U.S. and Iran as they work to negotiate a permanent end to the war. Iran has increasingly challenged the region and the U.S. over its control of the Strait of Hormuz, even with the current interim deal it reached with the U.S. last week.

The attack on the cargo ship happened while a United Nations maritime agency was beginning an operation to move stranded ships out of the strait this week, using an alternative route, hugging the shores of Oman rather than sailing through the central part of the strait.

The International Maritime Organization halted the evacuations after the attack and said on Friday they won’t resume until there are guarantees that the other ships won’t be attacked.

About 115 ships were able to move out of the strait in recent days, leaving about 500 still in the area, said Arsenio Dominguez, the agency’s secretary-general.

The opening of the alternative passage through the strait was expected to relieve pressure on the world economy and remove Iran’s main source of leverage in ongoing peace talks with the U.S.

The U.S. and Iran are still negotiating terms of the deal, including issues such as getting ships through the key strait and addressing the future of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Under the interim deal, the two sides have 60 days to work out the details.

Shipping analysts said the drone strike cast a shadow over what had been a growing stream of trapped vessels finally leaving the Gulf and an increasing flow of tankers carrying crude oil.

“A week of widening commercial confidence in the Strait of Hormuz has hit its first significant test,” said marine data company Windward on X. It said that while the strait remains operationally open with 43 transits recorded after the incident, “the pace of normalization has slowed.”

On Wednesday before Thursday’s drone strike, 78 vessels transited the strait, the highest since the war began, although below the prewar averages of 130 or more per day.

At least two tankers reversed course while attempting to transit the strait on the U.N.-backed route near Oman after Iran insisted vessels use only the Teheran-approved routes, according to marine data and analytic firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence.

More than two dozen ships were still transiting the strait’s southern route after the attack, Lloyd’s said Friday.