The French government and the opposition Socialist Party are blaming each other for a rapidly mounting death toll from a heat wave that has killed at least 3,000 people in France alone.

Ranking lawmakers from the Socialists and Greens have called on Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei to resign.

The Socialists are demanding an investigation into the conservative French government's handling of the crisis, in which the elderly were the worst hit.

The government didn't declare an emergency until a week into the record-setting heat wave across Europe.

Top Socialist lawmaker Arnaud Montebourg told reporters Friday it would be "dignified" for Mattei to "start thinking about the way he is going to phrase his letter of resignation," The Associated Press reported.

But the government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin charged back, saying the high toll is in part the fault of the previous Socialist government for implementing a 35-hour work week that cut the number of available health care workers.

Raffarin, who had cut short his vacation on Thursday to help manage the crisis, defended Mattei.

"The search for a scapegoat is not the solution for me," AP quoted Raffarin as saying.

On Saturday, Raffarin again left his Alpine vacation spot to visit a retirement home in the town of Fleury-sur-Ouche in the eastern Burgundy region, where he said it's important to show solidarity with the elderly.

He urged the opposition not to exploit the crisis for political ends.

"It's time for solidarity, not a polemic," AP quoted Raffarin as telling reporters.

Another conservative lawmaker defended the government, saying it could not guarantee that relatives and friends would look after their elderly loved ones.

Many of those who died were elderly people left alone at home by families taking holidays in the traditional vacation month of August, Raffarin said.

"This solitude of elderly people is a great flaw of French society," Raffarin said, launching "a call of national solidarity to lend a hand to the elderly."

Paris grave-diggers were called back to work on a national holiday.
Meanwhile, the bodies of those who perished in the heat wave continue to mount.

Officials are using a refrigerated warehouse in the main food depot outside Paris to hold some of the bodies. Refrigerated tents have been pitched outside the capital, and cemeteries were digging graves in advance.

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