TORY MSP Murdo Fraser has been left red-faced after deleting a tweet about the heatwave facing Europe.
With temperatures soaring, fires and storms are still raging across Europe with many holidaymakers evacuated.
On Wednesday morning, around 600 firefighters rushed to a Portuguese wildfire near a holiday town while fires are also burning in Italy, Croatia and Greece.
On Tuesday evening however, Tory MSP Fraser tweeted: “Can we have some of that Mediterranean heatwave here please?
“It’s horribly chilly for July, have just had to put a winter jumper on.”
Although Fraser deleted the tweet, several people on social media screenshotted it to share on Twitter.
Scottish Greens councillor for Partick East/Kelvindale Blair Anderson said: “He’s deleted it so sharing here for the record.
“@murdo_fraser is happy making jokes about climate crisis wildfires which have killed firefighters.”
Many others were also critical of Fraser with one person pointing out that “people are dying and homes are destroyed”.
“That heatwave is literally killing people”, said another.
Another Twitter user commented that they were “not surprised” that Fraser deleted his tweet.
“Utterly staggering” was how someone else described it as they said they struggled to “bring myself to comment on it”.
It’s been reported that more than 40 people have died in Europe in the wildfires threatening villages and holiday resorts.
Two people were also confirmed dead after a plane fighting the wildfires in Greece crashed.
The defence ministry said two pilots, Commander Christos Moulas, 34, and his 27-year-old co-pilot Pericles Stefanidis, were killed when their Canadair CL-215 plane crashed on Tuesday.
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The accident occurred around 30 minutes from the town of Karystos on the island of Evia near Athens, where a fire has been burning for several days.
The National has approached both Fraser and the Scottish Conservatives for comment.
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