French President Jacques Chirac said that anyone found responsible for setting fires would face "punishment of exceptional severity."

Firefighters battled through the night and into the morning along a swathe of territory in the Maures hills, behind some of the most expensive and exclusive real estate in Europe and not far from the Mediterranean coastal resort of Saint-Tropez, where some of those evacuated were given shelter.

Emergency services said four firefighters were injured, one of them seriously.

Visiting the region, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said the authorities would "show no mercy to people who start fires, including those who do so out of carelessness."

Two of the dead were a couple of British walkers, found burned to death on Monday in woods outside the village of La Garde Freinet in the Maures region, and the third was a 76-year-old woman who was found dead on the outskirts of the coastal town of Saint-Maxime.

Some 6,500 people were evacuated from Saint-Maxime and its environs, and from around the town of Frejus on Monday, but some were being allowed to return to their homes around Saint-Maxime early Tuesday.

In Saint Tropez officials opened a gym to accommodate people stranded on the road between the two towns after it was closed, while other evacuees were put up in an an aircraft hangar near Frejus.

Officials said that between 50 and 60 homes had been either damaged or completely destroyed by the fires.

The mayor of Frejus, Elie Brun, said officials in the town had found bottles of inflammable liquid fitted with rag fuses and apparently intended to set fires.

"The fires are criminal in origin. Here in Frejus we have found Molotov cocktails," he said.

Chirac, who was visiting the French Pacific territory of Polynesia, expressed his sympathy with the families of the victims, and said the government would take tough measures both to fight the fires and to punish anyone caught setting them.

Some 900 firefighters were still battling the blazes early Tuesday, and water-dropping aircraft were in action.

Some 3,000 people evacuated from the resort town of Frejus were bedded down in cots in an aircraft hangar that used to house fighter jets at a nearby former military base.

The fires, around a dozen in all, were estimated to have destroyed than 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres) of woodland and shrub along a swathe between the cities of Marseille and Nice, most of it in the Maures hills.

Elsewhere, a serious fire 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.

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

At the former airbase outside Frejus the mood was one of anger, with many saying the fires had been purposely set.

"This couldn't have been an accident. It was real scum who did this," said Patrick Pauget, who was staying at a nearby campsite with his family.

Despite having just 20 minutes to gather their belongings, the evacuation went smoothly, said Parisian computer technician Christian Junier. "Everything went calmly," he said.

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 the previous ones had caused no victims.

The fires have come amid an exceptionally hot and dry summer over much of southern and central Europe.

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TERRA.WIRE