Two of the victims, both of them elderly hikers from Britain, were discovered in woods outside the village of La Garde Freinet in the Maures region, an area of densely forested low-lying hills near the Mediterranean coast.

In Sainte Maxime, near the trendy resort of Saint Tropez, 1,500 people were evacuated to safety late Monday as the fire was encroaching on the coastal town, where the body of the third victim, a woman, was discovered.

A dozen fires that raged Monday in the Var region between the cities of Marseille and Nice destroyed more than 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres) of woodland, 6,000 hectares alone in the Maures mountains, rescue services said.

Around 10 homes have been gutted in the fire since it broke out in mid-afternoon causing panic among locals, and the blaze raged on into the evening with blackened trees and electricity cables strewn across the roads.

At 10:00 pm (2000 GMT) power outages left people in Sainte Maxime in the dark and all telephone lines were cut off.

More than 350 firemen were hard at work Monday evening tackling the flames that reached the coastline on a front of several kilometers (miles), whipped up by strong winds despite tonnes of water dropped from nine firefighting planes atop the burning hillsides.

Several houses, a golf course and hotels were evacuated and horse stables destroyed by the fire. It was not immediately known if any of the 60 horses were hurt.

In Saint Tropez officials opened a gym to accommodate people stranded on the road between the two towns after it was closed.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was due to travel to the Maures hills early Tuesday morning to lend his support to the firefighters.

Three major forest fires have swept through the Var region in the past 10 days, two in the Maures hills and one in the neighbouring Esterel -- both areas of outstanding natural beauty -- but had caused no victims.

In the Maures hills alone, the fires have destroyed around 10,000 hectares of forest, forcing thousands of residents and holidaymakers to flee.

Throughout the Var region, a dozen fires were detected on Monday, with one causing a campsite to be evacuated near the resort town of Frejus.

A serious fire also broke out Monday on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, near the southern town of Bonifacio, where one man was airlifted to hospital with severe burns and residents had to be evacuated by sea and air.

That fire also raged on.

French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced on Monday that the army would send reinforcements to help combat forest fires in the southeast.

On top of the 300 troops already dispatched to work alongside firefighters since the start of summer, the defence ministry will send another 100 men and extra helicopters to help prevent and combat forest fires.

Security services said the fires raging simultaneously in several southern regions were spreading at a pace unseen since special fire-fighting services were created after World War II.

A helicopter carrying Italian firefighters arrived in Corsica on Monday, with several dozen more bound for southeast France, French security services said, following an unprecedented French appeal for help in battling the flames.

TERRA.WIRE