A three-year-old has died after finding himself trapped in a car in the Paris region in extreme heat, a prosecutor said Thursday, the third such fatality this week.

The boy had slipped into the family car while his father thought he was napping, then found himself unable to get out with the child lock in the town of Saint-Gratien, the prosecutor said after a police source and civil defence also reported the death.

France on Wednesday recorded the hottest day since measurements began in 1947, the average temperature reaching 30C.

Temperatures in the capital reached 40.3C on the same day, topping 40C for the fourth time in 150 years.

The boy died after his parents and firefighters failed to resuscitate him, public prosecutor Guirec Le Bras said.

The mother was having a nap with the couple’s second child, an 18‑month‑old, while the father was working in a shed in the garden, he said, citing initial findings.

The father told his son to have a nap, but he escaped his parents’ supervision for at least 45 minutes, climbing into the car whose doors were not locked. But the child safety system was activated.

“He then apparently shut himself in and became trapped in the vehicle before being found unconscious by his parents,” he said.

His mother was in hospital in a state of shock.

It was just the latest death of a child in a vehicle during stifling heat.

The bodies of two children, aged two and four, were found in their family’s car in a residential parking lot in the southern town of Carpentras on Monday.

Around 63 million people were set to swelter in temperatures of more than 30°C on Thursday, according to AFP calculations, after the country experienced in hottest-ever night on record.

Forecasters have warned that the heatwave that started last week could rival the 2003 episode of extremely hot weather that claimed nearly 15,000 lives nationwide.

It is unclear how many people in all have died in France since last week due to the heat.

Paris mayor Emmanuel Gregoire earlier on Thursday reported that deaths were on the rise in the capital, but did not give a specific figure.

The heat has left millions in France struggling to keep their homes cool in a country where the government says one in three is not adapted to extreme heat and forced thousands of primary schools across France to closed or shorten their teaching hours.

AFP

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