Sharjah24 – AFP: Italy faced the hottest day of the current heatwave Friday with red extreme heat warnings issued for 16 cities across the country, as firefighters battled blazes up and down the country.

Worst hit is expected to be Milan in the north with temperatures hitting 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), while Bologna to its south and the capital Rome could hit 39 degrees, according to official government estimates.

Other major cities under a cautionary heatwave red alert for Friday and Saturday by Italy's health ministry include Florence, Genoa, Turin and Verona.

On Thursday, the city of Pavia, just south of Milan, broke a record with thermometers hitting 39.6 degrees.

For three consecutive months -- May, June and July -- national temperatures have been at least two to three degrees above the seasonal average, and the trend should continue until early August, said national weather website ilmeteo.com.

Along with the heat have come hundreds of fires across Italy in recent weeks. The largest still raging Friday was in central Tuscany, where 860 hectares had burned since Monday in an area west of Lucca.

Over 1,000 people were evacuated Thursday.

On Friday, 87 firefighters were on the ground after another night spent battling the flames, helped by reinforcements from the Lombardy and Piedmont regions. Water dumps from helicopters were underway, authorities said.

Prosecutors in Lucca have opened an investigation over the cause of the fire.