Two young children have been found dead inside a car in a residential parking lot in France, prosecutors have said, as a 40C heatwave sweeps across the country.

The children, aged two and four, were found by firefighters in cardiac arrest inside their mother’s car after a call at around 1.20pm on Monday afternoon.

Despite attempts to resuscitate the children, they both died. According to Le Parisien, the children are believed to have entered the vehicle without their 33-year-old mother’s knowledge before becoming trapped inside.

The tragic incident was announced by the Carpentras prosecutor’s office in Vaucluse, who said the cause of death is “still under investigation” but that “the heatwave is the leading theory”.

It is unclear how long the children were trapped inside the car.

It comes as temperatures hit a scorching height of 39 C in Vaucluse, with France at the epicentre of an extreme heatwave sweeping across much of Europe.

Three people had already died in France this week as extreme heat strikes the country, forcing nearly 2,700 schools to plan closure with temperatures in Bordeaux expected to exceed 42C on Monday.

“We’re heading for, at the very least, several days of very, very hot weather. We don’t know when temperatures will start falling,” French health minister Stephanie Rist said on TV channel TF1.

France’s weather agency, Meteo France, said 49 regional administrative areas will be under a red heatwave warning on Monday.

The Eiffel Tower and other venues in Paris have set up misting stations as authorities look to minimise risks for tourists. Meanwhile, French authorities banned alcohol consumption during the annual Fête de la Musique, a country-wide music festival, to “allow medical staff to focus on caring for the most vulnerable”.

The heatwave comes after the World Health Organisation’s Europe office said that more than 200,000 people have died across Europe from heat-related causes over the last four years.

Three elderly people, aged between 80 and 95, died over the weekend in the Bordeaux region as a result of health issues caused by the current heatwave in France, local government official Sophie Brocas told France TV late on Sunday.

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