A girl was rescued from a burning house while 50 nursery school children were hospitalized due to smoke inhalation as wildfires raged across parts of Sicily on Thursday.
Italy's Civil Protection office has issued weather warnings for many Italian provinces over the next two days as the country is hit by a series of violent storms.
The hot stuffy weather brought by the hellish heatwave Caronte is set to end this weekend, but meteorologists are warning that it's no cause for celebration.
Record temperatures in north-western Italy have left 140 pensioners dead in just the first ten days of July, according to data from the environmental agency, Arpa Piedmont.
After a weekend of fresher temperatures across Italy, the country is set to boil once more as another heatwave arrives, pushing temperatures up to 39 degrees Celsius.
Two people died on Wednesday as temperatures in parts of Italy continued to hover around 40 degrees Celsius, bringing the number of those who have died of heat-related causes over the past week to over ten.
Nine elderly people died of heat-related causes over four days that saw temperatures top 41 degrees Celsius in parts of Italy, according to Italian media reports.
With the arrival of summer, the mercury is rising across Italy. Not content to have already seen a heatwave in June, now weather forecasters are predicting a record July.
Temperatures are set to soar across Italy in the hottest heatwave the country has seen for a decade. One forecaster describes it as the hottest heatwave since the "infamous" summer of 2003.
