More than 8,000 firefighters, 1,700 firetrucks and 10 helicopters have been deployed along with 21 planes including 13 "Scoopers" used to drop water on fires.

"Today new fires broke out in (southern) Calabria and in Sicily and Sardinia," public safety director Luigi d'Angelo told AFP.

An emergency services spokesman said three major operations were under way Monday afternoon near the central Italian town of Gubbio, near Catania in Sicily and around railway lines at San Giuliano Milanese, near northern Milan.

The fire outside Milan caused a halt in national rail traffic for about an hour and a half in the middle of the day.

"We've received 70 calls in the past 24 hours, which is twice the daily average for the season," D'Angelo said.

Nearly 7,000 hectares (17,000 acres) of brush and forest burned in Italy in the first two weeks of July, forestry officials said.

A surge in fires in recent days has been blamed on a combination of high winds and soaring temperatures.

Eleven cities -- including Rome, Venice, Naples and Palermo -- are on "high alert" for heat-related health problems amid temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in some places.

A public safety warning said temperatures would remain high until at least Wednesday in the south, with a peak of 41.3 degrees Celsius (106 Fahrenheit) predicted Tuesday in Catania, Sicily, and 39.2 degrees in Rome.

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