Greece battled a wildfire on Thursday on the island of Crete that has killed two firefighters and forced thousands to flee. The flames were the latest in a series of blazes that have charred Europe this summer and tested its ability to deal with increasingly extreme weather.

More than 220 firefighters were tackling the wildfire in Crete, which broke out on Wednesday in the area of Krya Vrysi, in the south of the island. The fire, one of several that the Greek authorities were tackling on Thursday, was being fueled by strong wind, complicating efforts to put out the flames.

“The winds are so intense that aircraft can’t operate,” Giorgos Tsapakos, the deputy regional governor for Crete, told state television on Thursday morning. He said that the fire front stretched over nearly 10 miles but that residential areas were not currently under threat.

Evangelos Tournas, Greece’s minister of climate crisis and civil protection, said late Wednesday that the two firefighters who died in Crete were aged 58 and 25. The circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear.

Summertime wildfires are common in parts of southern Europe. But the blazes in Greece came as fighters were still working on fires in France and Spain. Those had been mostly contained by Thursday, officials said, but they have caused alarm across the continent, where climate change is fueling extreme temperatures and making wildfires more widespread.

Maria Lioni, the deputy regional governor of the Rethymno region of Crete, spoke of “a nightmarish day and a nightmarish night” in comments to state television on Thursday, adding that the authorities had evacuated “many villages, large and small.” She said that it was too early to assess the damage fully but that it appeared to be extensive.

About 8,000 people were evacuated from the southern coastal area of Agia Galini, Ms. Lioni said, although Greece’s Ministry for Climate Crisis and Civil Protection later announced that visitors who had been evacuated from the area had started returning to their hotels.

Many residents stayed with relatives or friends in other parts of Crete, while visitors to the island, a popular vacation destination, were moved to hotels in safe areas. About 700 people took shelter at a gymnasium, where mattresses were set up and food distributed.

The Greek authorities were also bolstering efforts to douse wildfires in other parts of the country. Many Greek areas remained at high fire risk on Thursday, including greater Athens, Crete, the Cyclades islands and much of the Peloponnese, according to civil protection authorities.

On the island of Lesbos, nearly 100 firefighters were still putting out flames that broke out near the town of Plomari. In the Peloponnese, a firefighter died on Wednesday on the sidelines of a blaze in the area of Gytheio.

Much of Western Europe is in the grip of another spell of intense heat, the continent’s fourth since May. Officials have warned that a combination of prolonged dry weather, gusty winds, extreme temperatures and low humidity would significantly increase the risk that wildfires will spread and new ones will ignite.

In Scotland, firefighters have been battling a two-week conflagration that has ripped through moorland and forest and destroyed cherished natural scenery.

In France, a massive fire in the southwestern Gironde area did not spread overnight but was still active, locals officials said. The weather was expected to be more favorable on Thursday, with a forecast of lower temperatures and rainfall, and the local prefect said that about 84,000 people could return home.

Fires in Spain near Madrid have also been largely stabilized, and firefighters have managed to contain another blaze, in Castellón Province near Valencia. But officials have warned that high temperatures and low humidity could quickly ignite other blazes. New wildfires in Zamora and León, in northwestern Spain, have already forced hundreds of people to evacuate.

Fewer than 1,000 of the roughly 60,000 people displaced by the wildfires near Madrid remain unable to return home, officials said.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez declared an end to the national wildfire emergency in Madrid and surrounding areas on Thursday morning after the blazes were contained, returning responsibility for firefighting operations to regional authorities. But he urged caution as fires continued to burn elsewhere in Spain and as a heat wave was expected to continue in the country through Sunday. “In any case, the emergency is not over,” he said.

Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting from Paris, and Carlos Barragán from Madrid.