France is battling a severe heat wave as temperatures pass record levels. Paris has recorded temperatures well above 40C for the first time in 150 years. Tuesday was recorded as the hottest day in the country, a record that was then broken again on Wednesday.
Amidst these blistering temperatures, an 18-month-old baby died after being found unconscious with heatstroke and hyperthermia in a car in Marseille on Tuesday 23 June. The child was apparently forgotten by a parent in the La Timone medical campus car park while the parent went to work.
This death is part of a string of fatal hot-car incidents involving young children this week. In Saint-Gratien, in the Paris suburbs, a boy died after climbing into an unlocked car while out of his parents' sight, resulting in his mother being hospitalized in shock. This marked the third such child fatality during the extreme weather this week, following the deaths of two other children in Carpentras on Monday. As record temperatures persist, the heat wave-related death toll continues to rise.