A wooded area in northern Greece affected by wildfires for the past four days has been rocked by tragedy.
The Greek fire service found 18 bodies and initial reports suggest that the bodies belong to migrants.
A coroner and an investigation team head to the location in the Dadia forest.
The Evros region in northeastern Greece, not far from the Turkish border, was devastated by fires.
A ferry for the sick
A hospital in the city of Alexandroupoli had to be evacuated and both intensive care patients and newborn babies were transferred overnight to a ferry docked in the port.
The fires have already caused another death, also believed to be a migrant, in a town near the coastal city.
The emergency services sent text messages via mobile phones to residents of the surrounding areas urging them to leave.
Dadia National Park is a large forested area north of Alexandroupoli, where fires have been burning since Monday.
The 18 bodies were found near a cabin on the outskirts of the town of Avantas on Tuesday as firefighters were inspecting the charred remains of a building.
A fiery red glow was visible on the outskirts of Alexandroupoli in the early hours of Tuesday and satellite images showed various regions of Greece shrouded in thick smoke.
Overnight, residents of eight nearby towns were asked to leave their homes and go to safety in the city.
A line of cars could be seen heading into the city on Tuesday as vegetation burned along the shoreline.
Flames were seen entering the grounds of the university hospital as the operation to evacuate the site was underway.
Greek authorities ordered a fleet of ambulances and buses to take away some 115 patients.
Also the industrial zone
While some of the patients were transferred to other hospitals in the city, up to 90 were transported to a ferry, the Adamantios Korais, which was requisitioned to treat intensive care patients and newborns.
Fires are also burning tens of kilometers northwest of the city, in Rhodope, and further west, along the coast, in Kavala.
To the west of the capital, several warehouses were engulfed in flames in an industrial area of Aspropyrgos, and near the Attica highway the sky darkened with thick smoke.
Two Albanian workers told the BBC that if the helicopters had arrived in time they would have been able to put out the fire.
On Tuesday around noon a second large fire broke out on the opposite side of the road, in the village of Fyli.
Half an hour later, the residents received a message on their mobile from the emergency number 112 to evacuate the area.
The fire also spread near the historic Kleiston Dormition of the Virgin Mary Monastery, a few kilometers north of Fyli, in the foothills of Mount Parnitha.
50 nuns
Fire service officials say 50 nuns live at the monastery and a disaster response team has been dispatched to bring them to safety.
Greece is one of several European countries currently at extreme risk of forest fires, according to the EU’s climate monitoring service, Copernicus.
Meanwhile, France suffered the hottest day in its history on Monday after the mid-August holiday, according to the Météo-France meteorological service.
Temperatures on Monday reached 42.4°C in the Drôme area of southeastern France, but the record refers to Monday’s average daily temperature of 26.63°C, recorded at 30 weather stations across France .
In Switzerland, high temperatures have pushed the “zero degree isotherm,” the height where temperatures drop below freezing, to record highs.
MeteoSwiss said the limit had now been increased to 5,298 m (17,381 ft).
The point is getting higher and higher, mainly due to human-induced global warming, the Swiss meteorological office claims.
The rise in the height of the zero degree isotherm has been accelerating since the 1970s, especially in spring and summer, he says.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/c25zweg89dlo, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-08-22 16:30:10
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