Rome burns

Warning as killer temperatures soar in Italy and Spain with heatwave heading eastward

- NADA FARHOUD

A BLISTERING heatwave named after a hound of hell has already claimed at least one life as it sweeps across southern Europe.

A 44-year-old construction worker who collapsed by the side of a road died in hospital on Tuesday.

His death in the northern Italian city of Lodi comes as southern Europe suffers in the heat, predicted to reach a record-breaking 45C later this week.

Brothers aged six and seven, trying to cool off, drowned in an irrigation basin in Manfredonia, on Italy's eastern coast.

Meanwhile crowds flocked to Rome's beach at Ostia to escape the worst of the heatwave, called Cerberus by Italy's Meteorological Society. The mythological three-headed dog guarded the gates of the Underworld.