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Three people die in Greece as wildfires rage
Ministry warns of ‘extreme danger’ of fire in six of country's 13 regions
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aging wildfires in Greece turned deadly on Tuesday when a firefighting plane crashed, killing two pilots, and a third person was found dead as relentless heat waves fueled flames.
Greece's fire department said the Canadair aircraft crashed into a ravine close to where the fire started on Sunday. Footage on state TV ERT showed the plane clipping a tree before falling nose-first and exploding.
The pilots were members of the Greek air force, and the defense ministry said it had declared a three-day mourning period.
"They lost their lives saving lives," the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement.
The Greek defense ministry ordered three days of mourning in the armed forces.
"Our support goes to the heroes who, in Greece, France and everywhere else, risk their lives every summer to fight the fires," the French president Emmanuel Macron posted on Twitter, which is being rebranded as 'X'.
Another man was found dead and "a DNA test will be needed to confirm if this is a shepherd that was missing since Sunday," according to Konstantina Dimoglidou, Greek police spokeswoman.
Greece's firefighters continue to battle wildfires with three major fronts on the tourist islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Evia and several other blazes active throughout the country.
The Civil Protection Ministry has warned of an "extreme danger" of fire in six of the country's 13 regions on Wednesday.
Climate change
Scientists from the World Weather Attribution group said on Tuesday the heat waves that have hit parts of Europe and North America this month would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change.
"In the face of what the entire planet is facing, especially the Mediterranean, which is a climate change hot spot, there is no magical defense mechanism. If there was, we would have implemented it," Mitsotakis told his cabinet.
Three days before the plane crash, Mitsotakis acknowledged that the aged Canadair CL-215 water bombers used by Greece – a model first produced in the mid-1960s – were "old, difficult [to fly] and prone to malfunction".
He had vowed to bring in new models available in 2026.
WWF Greece on Tuesday said 35,000 hectares of forest and other land had been scorched by fire in the country just in the past week.
Greece has been hit by the third heat wave in a row for July, and the heat is expected to reach 46 degrees Celsius in parts of the country, according to the national weather forecaster EMY.
Vassilis Kikilias, Greece's civil protection minister, said crews had battled over 500 fires around the country for 12 straight days.
More evacuations were ordered in several parts of Corfu and Rhodes on Tuesday, as flames destroyed swathes of land and dozens of properties.
Authorities evacuated tens of thousands of people on the two popular tourist destinations, with many frightened tourists scrambling to get home on evacuation flights.
More than 260 firefighters were still battling flames for an eighth consecutive day on Rhodes, supported by nine planes and two helicopters.
A source at Rhodes airport operators Fraport said the situation had normalized, with traffic levels consistent with the height of the summer season.
More than 5,000 people had flown home on more than 40 emergency flights from Sunday to Tuesday, the official told AFP.
Volunteers had come to the aid of foreign tourists in the north of Rhodes, where nearly 200 people are still camped out at a school after being evacuated from the fires on Saturday.
"I can't believe they are so nice, they gave so much in every way," said 69-year-old British tourist Christine Moody, who was spending her first vacation in Greece when the fires hit.
"I am very moved," she said.
