ALEXANDROUPOLIS, Greece (AP) — Firefighters found the burned bodies Tuesday of 18 people believed to be migrants who had crossed the Turkish border into an area of northeastern Greece where wildfires have raged for days.
The discovery near the city of Alexandroupolis came as hundreds of firefighters battled dozens of wildfires across the country amid hurricane-force winds. On Monday, two people were killed and two firefighters injured in separate fires in northern and central Greece.
With their hot and dry summers, the southern European countries are particularly prone to forest fires. Another large fire has been burning for a week in Tenerife, in Spain’s Canary Islands, although no injuries or damage to homes were reported.
European Union officials have blamed climate change Due to the increasing frequency and intensity of forest fires in europenoting that 2022 was the second worst year on record for wildfire damage after 2017.
In Greece, the police activated the country’s authorities. Disaster Victim Identification Team to identify the 18 bodies, which were found near a shack in the Avantas area, fire department spokesman Ioannis Artopios said.
“Since there have been no reports of missing persons or missing neighbors from the surrounding areas, the possibility that these are people who have entered the country illegally is being investigated,” Artopios said.
Alexandroupolis is close to the border with Turkey, along a route often taken by people fleeing poverty and conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Africa and seeking membership of the European Union.
Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou expressed her regret over the deaths in a statement.
“We must urgently take effective initiatives to ensure that this grim reality does not become the new normal,” he added, referring to the recurring forest fires.
Avantas, like many nearby towns and settlements, had received evacuation orders and alerts in Greek and English had been sent to all mobile phones in the region.
Firefighters said they were investigating the causes of the fires, in coordination with the police and the secret service. In recent days, several people have been arrested or fined for accidentally setting fires.
But the discovery of the 18 bodies sparked backlash from some who accused the migrants of starting fires.
On Monday night, police said they detained three men in Alexandroupolis suspected of kidnapping and illegally holding 13 migrants. One of the suspects was a man seen in a video posted on social media locking a group of migrants in a trailer and accusing them of “trying to burn us,” according to a statement from the national police headquarters.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis issued a statement condemning the vigilantes’ actions.
Overnight, a massive wall of flames tore through the forests toward Alexandroupolis, prompting authorities to evacuate eight more villages and the city hospital as flames reddened the sky.
Deputy Health Minister Dimitris Vartzopoulos, speaking on Greek Skai television, said smoke and ash in the air around the hospital were the main reasons behind the decision to evacuate the facility.
The coast guard said patrol boats and private boats evacuated another 40 people by sea from the beaches near Alexandroupolis.
In the northeastern border region of Evros, a fire was raging through a forest in a protected national park, and satellite images showed smoke blanketing much of northern and western Greece.
New fires broke out in several parts of the country on Tuesday, including a forest northwest of Athens and an industrial area on the western outskirts of the capital.
Small explosions resounded in the industrial area of Aspropyrgos as flames ripped through warehouses and factories. Authorities closed a road and ordered the evacuation of nearby settlements.
With firefighting forces stretched thin, Greece asked the European Union’s civil protection mechanism for help.
Five water-dropper planes from Croatia, Germany and Sweden, a helicopter, 58 firefighters and nine water tankers from the Czech Republic flew to Greece on Tuesday, while 56 Romanian firefighters and two planes from Cyprus arrived on Monday. French firefighters helped fight a fire on the island of Evia on Monday.
“Actually, we are mobilizing almost a third of the planes we have in the rescEU fleet,” said EU spokesman Balazs Ujvari.
The fire risk level for several regions, including the wider Athens area, was listed as “extreme” for a second day on Tuesday. Authorities banned public access to the mountains and forests in those regions until at least Wednesday morning and ordered military patrols.
In Spain, firefighters battled to control a week-long forest fire in the popular tourist destination of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. The fire, which has razed 150 square kilometers (59 square miles), is estimated to have already burned a third of Tenerife’s forests.
More than 12,000 people have been evacuated in the past week. Authorities said Tuesday that 1,500 have been able to return to their homes. Authorities have described the fire as the worst in decades in the Atlantic archipelago.
Large parts of Spain were under alert for forest fires when temperatures reached over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). While southern Spain typically sees extremely high temperatures, the country’s weather agency issued an alert for the northern Basque Country, where temperatures were forecast to reach 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday.
Greece’s deadliest forest fire killed 104 people in 2018, in a seaside resort near Athens whose residents had not been warned to evacuate. Since then, the authorities have erred on the side of caution, issuing swift mass evacuation orders whenever inhabited areas are threatened.
Last month, a forest fire on the island of Rhodes forced the evacuation of about 20,000 tourists. Days after, two air force pilots were killed when his water-dropper plane crashed while descending to fight a fire in Evia.
A week-long bushfire on the Greek resort island of Rhodes tore through defenses on Monday, forcing more evacuations, as strong winds and successive heatwaves that left dry scrub and forest fueled three major fires raging elsewhere. from Greece. (July 24)
In Italy, authorities evacuated 700 people from their homes and a camp on the Tuscan island of Elba after a fire broke out Monday night, while in Turkey authorities evacuated nine villages in the northwestern province of Canakkale. Turkish media also said authorities reduced shipping traffic in the Dardanelles Strait in case firefighting ships needed to be deployed to the area.
According to the Italian Society for Environmental Geology, more than 1,100 fires in Europe this summer have consumed 2,842 square kilometers (about 1,100 square miles), well above the average of 724 fires per year recorded between 2006 and 2022. The fires have destroyed areas forested areas capable of absorbing 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.
“When we add the fires in Canada, the United States, Africa, Asia and Australia to those in Europe, it seems that the situation is getting worse every year,” said SIGEA president Antonello Fiore.
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Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece. Associated Press writers Nicholas Paphitis in Athens, Joe Wilson in Barcelona, Colleen Barry in Milan, Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Raf Casert in Brussels contributed.
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