One person dies and several thousand are evacuated as wildfires rage out of control in the Costa del Sol in southern Spain.

The fire broke out near the port city of Malaga late on Thursday and raced westward, fanned by strong winds and high temperatures.

On Friday it reached the edge of the tourist resort of Marbella on the Costa del Sol.

Two people suffered minor burns when the blaze threatened a housing estate in the north of the resort, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people to a sports centre.

The Foreign Office said "several hundred" Britons have been evacuated from the popular tourist area, including around 300 who have relocated to shelters.

There have been no reports of any injuries to British citizens.

Spanish firefighters attempted to control the fires backed by aircraft and helicopters dumping water on the flames.

"It is dangerous because the fire fighters are risking a lot," a local resident told Spanish news agency Atlas. "Even with the strong winds and clouds they are getting very close. There were fifty planes this morning."

Dry weather

Another resident said: "I am very scared. The fire was at the beginning of the street and we couldn't even hear an ambulance arriving or a siren."

Local authorities do not know how the fire started, but said they hoped to bring it under control later on Friday because the wind had dropped.

Unusually dry weather in Spain has resulted in wildfires burning thousands of hectares of land this summer, and temperatures have hit record highs in some regions.

Thousands of people were evacuated earlier this month in the Canary Islands, while four people died in fires in the border area between France and Catalonia, in northeast Spain, in July.

Millions of tourists visit the Costa del Sol every year and hundreds of thousands of expatriates from northern Europe live on the coastal belt.