Scenes of panic erupted in a mountain village near Palermo on Friday as one of the many fires devastating Sicily's northern coastal areas began to engulf buildings on the outskirts of the community.
Firefighters began a partial evacuation of San Martino delle Scale, where a fire has been raging since Thursday night and where there were unconfirmed reports of injuries among residents.
At least three villagers were whisked to hospital in Palermo suffering from smoke inhalation, rescue workers said.
They said dozens of residents had been escorted to safety in a quarry near the village.
Firefighters were also struggling to put out another major blaze in countryside near Patti, a northern coastal town not far from the port city of Messina where a fire destroyed a holiday farm on Wednesday, killing three people.
The latest fire threatened the village of Montagnareale, where local officials said half of public woodland had gone up in flames.
Police said the village would have to be evacuated if firemen failed to bring the blaze under control within the next few hours.
4 HELD OVER FATAL FARM FIRE.
Meanwhile, magistrates were questioning four shepherds held in connection with the Patti holiday farm fire, which left three people dead and 17 people injured, several of them seriously.
Police seized two cars belonging to the four, which were seen in the vicinity of the farm shortly before the fire broke out.
A lawyer for one of the shepherds said his client could face charges of arson and manslaughter.
Sicily, along with other areas of central and southern Italy, has been hit by a fire emergency over the past two months which has claimed at least 14 leaves and destroyed thousands of hectares of forest, woodland and coastal brush as well as dozens of properties.
The scale of the emergency prompted Defence Minister Arturo Parisi to send in the army on Wednesday.
Arsonists have been blamed for most of the fires and Premier Romano Prodi has called for "the greatest severity" in punishing "such unthinkable crimes".
Suspicion usually focuses on farmers seeking to clear space for agricultural purposes or construction speculators hoping to win permits to build on protected land.
It is also sometimes claimed that firefighters themselves and seasonal workers with the Forestry Corps set fire to woods in the hope of creating new jobs, either battling the flames or working in reforestation programmes.
Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro said on Friday that "the situation is dramatic and criminal".
"These arsonists must be caught and sent to prison. Zero tolerance is the only solution," he said.
