By midday all but two of the blazes, one near the central town of Mangualde and the other just across the northern border from Spain near Viana do Castelo, were contained but firefighters remained on on alert for flareups.

More than 200 firefighters backed by dozens of soldiers were monitoring hot spots at the scene of a blaze in a mountainous region near Alhadas that burned some 900 hectares (2,200 acres) of land over two days before it was finally brought under control in the early hours of Wednesday.

Civil protection officials said 14 of mainland Portugal's 18 regions suffered from a very high or extreme risk of wildfires on Wednesday because of

soaring temperatures and low air humidity levels.

Portugal, which is facing its worst drought in decades, saw temperatures rise in some localities above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday for the first time this year.

The national weather office expects temperatures to remain above average for this time of the year until at least Thursday.

The wildfires have thrown the spotlight on government delays in providing firefighters with equipment, especially more water-dropping aircraft, to battle wildfires.

Firefighters across the entire country currently have only two water-dropping helicopters available to them, and one is suffering from technical problems.

"Two helicopters for a sea of fire," screamed top-selling Jornal de Noticias on its front page while Correio da Manha headlined "Fires fought without means" above a photo of a man using a bucket of water to put out the flames.

Interior Minister Antonio Costa said the government would ensure firefighters had more water-dropping aircraft at their disposal year-round as of 2006 instead of just during the summer months.

"That is clearly my objective," he told news radio TSF.

He said the government would either lease or buy the aircraft, or would convert obsolete military helicopters into aircraft that could be used to fight fires.

The minister added that aircraft which the government leased for this summer, which were to have been delivered on Monday, would arrive on June 16.

He said the delay was due to the fact that the previous centre-right administration had ordered aircraft designed to fill their tanks from dam reservoirs -- which can no longer be used since water levels are too low.

The government had to cancel this order and replace it with one for aircraft that could fill their tanks with water on land, Costa said.

The ongoing drought has raised fears of a repeat the summer of 2003 when a heatwave caused a spate of wildfires that left 20 people dead and destroyed over 400,000 hectares of land.

Wildfires have destroyed 9,863 hectares hectares of forest during the first five months of 2005, a 62 percent increase over the same time last year.

Four firefighters died in February after their vehicle became surrounded by flames as they battled a rare winter wildfire in central Portugal.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.