Two people have died in Italy as temperatures continue to soar amid an intense heatwave across Europe. In Bologna a 47-year-old died after falling ill on a construction site while a 70-year-old man was reported drowned during flash flooding at a tourist resort to the west of Turin.

Europe is sweltering under an intense heatwave, as temperatures soar across Spain, Portugal, France and Italy for one of the hottest summer starts ever recorded.

The heat was so expansive that mountaintops, including the French Alps, that are usually frozen from snowpack saw record temperatures. Heat records were set for June in Spain and Portugal.