"The (death) figures are high, perhaps even very high.... We can now talk about what happened as a true epidemic, with everything that means in terms of the number of victims," Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei said in an interview to France Inter radio.

A statement from his ministry said that "the number of deaths directly or indirectly linked to the heat during this period can be estimated at around 3,000 for all of France."

The acknowledgement followed days of warnings from doctors, police and undertakers that bodies had piled up staggeringly quickly in the 40-degree-Celsius (104-degree-Fahrenheit) temperatures that had baked the country.

An association of hospital emergency room doctors, AMUHF, which had accused the government of underestimating the crisis, held a news conference to say it estimated 2,000 people had died during the hot weather.

"The figures are becoming catastrophic," the head of the association, Patrick Pelloux, said. "We can talk about thousands of victims, even though we can't yet fully measure the phenomenon."

A hospital workers' union leader, Francois Freisse, said that, even though the heatwave appeared to have receded over much of France Thursday, heat-stroke victims were still expected in the coming days.

He also singled out the government, saying "the authorities didn't react immediately when faced with the seriousness of the situation."

Pelloux called on the government to expand nationally an emergency medical plan put in place in and around Paris Wednesday that is normally reserved for epidemics, disasters or terrorist attacks. The plan provides extra hospital beds and staff, and permits temporary morgues to be set up.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin announced the plan after city officials and unions raised the alarm.

A police officers' trade union, Synergie Officiers, on Wednesday said there had been a "massive loss of life in Paris these past weeks".

One of its leaders, Mohamed Douhane, said the union had asked the police administration to call on the army to remove the bodies of the deceased, as undertakers were "overwhelmed."

After making the announcement, Raffarin brushed aside a call for him to resign launched by the opposition Greens party, saying: "This is not the time for arguments. I feel that I did all what was necessary at the right time."

Newspapers Thursday took stock of the piles of corpses being counted in hospitals and morgues across the country.

One daily, Le Parisien, said tallies from Paris hospitals, retirement homes and local authorities showed there had been 2,000 more deaths in the capital alone over the past week than for the same period last year.

"Such a difference in the number of deaths leaves no room for doubt: it was the heat that killed these elderly people," it said.

The Liberation newspaper used the one-word headline "massacre" on its front page, and lashed the government in an editorial for having done "too little, too late."

It added that most ministers had apparently been too reluctant to cut short their summer vacations -- which for France traditionally means all the month of August -- and demanded that the government now give serious thought to global warming, energy production and water management.

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