At least 26 bodies have been found by firefighters in an area devastated by a massive forest fire that has been raging for days in northeastern Greece, authorities said today.
Greek police have activated the country’s Disaster Victims Identification Team to identify the bodies, which were found in Dadia National Park, in the Avanta area, in the northeastern region of Alexandroupolis, Ioannis Artopios told Greek television, spokesman of the firefighters.
According to Artopios, since no missing persons reports have been filed in the area, authorities are investigating the possibility that the victims were migrants who entered the country after crossing the Evros River, which borders Turkey.
High temperatures, combined with dry weather and wind, have sparked dozens of wildfires across Greece. At the moment, the most serious fire has been raging for four days near the port city of Alexandroupolis, in the northeast of the country.
#BREAK #GreeceFiring Apocalyptic scenes of forest fires in Evros region, Greece. 18 dead people have been found. pic.twitter.com/8lRZcYVaz6
— National Independent (@NationalIndNews) August 22, 2023
Burning in Greece pic.twitter.com/K5fKAh05KP
– D. Scott @eclipsethis2003 (@eclipsethis2003) August 22, 2023
On Monday, two people were killed and two firefighters injured in separate fires in northern and central Greece.
For the second day in a row, the fire risk level is ‘extreme’ for several regions, including the Athens region.
Authorities have banned public access to the mountains and forests in these regions until at least Wednesday and ordered military patrols.
In northeastern Greece, Monday’s fire raged towards Alexandroupolis, prompting authorities to evacuate eight other villages and the city hospital.
Deputy Health Minister Dimitris Vartzopoulos told Greek television Skai that smoke and ash were the main reasons for the evacuation of the local hospital.
About 65 of the more than 100 people hospitalized were taken to a ferry docked in the city’s port, while other patients were taken to hospitals in northern Greece. The ferry left this morning for the port city of Kavala, where patients would be transferred to another hospital.
A new fire broke out this morning in Aspropyrgos, on the western outskirts of the capital, and authorities issued evacuation orders for two nearby villages.
The European Commission mobilized 56 firefighters, ten support vehicles and two aircraft on Monday to help fight this new wave of fires, a statement from the European agency said. In addition, a team of firefighters pre-deployed by France is already in Greece, as part of the EU’s preparedness plan for the forest fire season.
The assistance now announced follows the EU’s response to Greece’s earlier activation of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism last month, when nine aircraft, 510 firefighters and 117 vehicles were mobilised, as well as the programme’s satellite mapping service, Copernicus, who is still making reviews. the damage in the country.
In July, a fire caused by strong winds and extreme heat destroyed nearly 17,770 hectares in ten days in the south of the island of Rhodes, a popular tourist destination in the southeastern Aegean Sea. About 20,000 people, mostly tourists, were evacuated from the island because of the fire.
At the end of July, the country experienced its worst heat wave compared to the same period in other years, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius in many places, according to the National Observatory of Athens.
updated at 3pm
Source: DN
