The bodies of 18 people have been found in an area of north-east Greece where firefighters are battling a major wildfire, authorities have said, as a record-breaking late summer heatwave continues to sear much of Europe.
Hundreds of firefighters were struggling on Tuesday to contain dozens of outbreaks, including several that are burning out of control and have forced widespread evacuations, in the second deadly wave of blazes in Greece in a month.
The bodies were found near a shack in the Avanta area of the Alexandroupolis region near Greece’s borders with Turkey and Bulgaria, authorities said, and a disaster victim identification team was working to identify them.
A fire service spokesperson, Ioannis Artopios, said that since no reports of missing people had been filed in the area, where afire has been burning out of control for several days, it was possible the casualties were migrants who had entered from Turkey.
Fires were also burning on the islands of Evia and Kythnos, and in the region of Boeotia, north of Athens, amid a dangerous mix of gale-force winds and temperatures of up to 41C.
“It’s a similar situation to July,” a fire department spokesperson told Agence France-Presse, referring to a wave in several parts of Greece that left five people dead. More than 60 fires had erupted in the last 24 hours, and six countries were sending help via the European Union’s civil protection mechanism, the fire service said.
About 120 firefighters from Cyprus, Romania, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany and Serbia would help, a fire department spokesperson, Vassilis Vathrakogiannis, told the state TV station ERT.
A new fire broke out on Tuesday at a landfill site in the industrial zone of Aspropyrgos, near Athens, covering the area in a noxious black cloud.