A fire that broke out in the Algarve municipality of Monchique on Friday and that still was raging on Monday, has now spread over the border to the Alentejo, and caused the evacuation of a small village in the neighbouring municipality of Odemira, having uprooted a total around 110 people since the blaze started.

More than 1,000 firefighters were on Monday morning battling flames in Monchique municipality, in the interior of Portugal's Algarve region, which had already forced the evacuation of around 110 residents of villages, according to civil defence officials.

On Sunday night at least two hotels in Monchique were evacuated as a precaution due to the encroaching fire, as it completely surrounded the northern fringes of the mountain town centre. People had already been evacuated from at least two villages in Monchique and Odemira due to the flames. Authorities have confirmed a number of homes have perished in the inferno.

According to the website of the National Civil Protection Authority (ANPC), a total of 1,066 men and women were on the ground in the Perna da Negra area Sunday morning, backed up by 324 vehicles and an aircraft.

Firefighters were battling two active fronts, one that remains considerably more intense and difficult to tackle, an official at the Faro district command told Lusa News Agency on Sunday morning.

The fire flared up in an area where there had already been a smaller fire on Thursday.

“This fire started in explosive fashion, at this moment it has two active fronts: in one of them the battle is going favourable, but in the other it is still very unfavourable," the official said.

The fire, he explained, is consuming an “area of brush and eucaliptus trees, with quite difficult terrain”, and firefighters are also struggling with strong winds, "which are of course complicating the operation".

At the other end of Portugal, a fire that broke out on Friday in Caravelas, in Mirandela municipality, was brought under control by late afternoon, with the aid of 122 firefighters, the Bragança district commander of relief operations told Lusa.

"The fire was deemed to be dominated by about 17:30, as the fight was already going favourably," said the commander, Noel Afonso.

According to Afonso, there had been one main active front in a forested area.

Portugal’s civil defence authorities on Friday extended their red alert for forest fires – the highest – to 11 more districts of mainland Portugal: Lisbon, Setúbal, Évora, Santarém, Portalegre, Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Leiria, Viseu, Guarda and Bragança were thus all under red alert.

The district of Faro and Beja had already been under red alert since Thursday.

Aveiro, Oporto, Braga, Viana do Castelo and Vila Real were on orange alert, the second highest level.