Two dead, hundreds evacuated from fires on island near Athens

“SPREAD IN SEVEN MINUTES”

But two people, reportedly an elderly couple, died before firefighters could get to them, Vathrakogiannis said in a televised address.

With the wind reaching up to 61 kilometres (38 miles) per hour, the fire “spread rapidly in seven minutes”, he said.

Nine people required medical care for burns, state agency ANA said.

Greek TV stations showed footage of several homes gutted by the flames.

Salamis, just west of Athens, has some 37,000 residents, many of them elderly, and the beaches were full of people on Sunday, including day travellers, officials said.

Battling through rocky terrain, firefighters managed to keep the blaze in Selinia from scaling a mountain and linking up with the other fire, Salamis’s deputy mayor Thodoris Zannis told the ERT TV station. 

A fire department spokesman told AFP that the Selinia blaze had been put out by the evening, while scattered pockets of fire remained at Peristeria.

The fire service mobilised a large force of some 260 firefighters, nearly 60 engines, 10 aircraft and seven helicopters, rushing in reinforcements from the mainland.