Flames swept through a residential town outside Athens overnight as wildfires burned across Greece for a fifth day on Saturday, and hundreds of people were evacuated by ferry from the island of Evia east of the capital.
The fire on Mount Parnitha on the outskirts of Athens has forced the evacuation of thousands of people since late Thursday, with emergency crews facing winds and high temperatures as they battle to contain its spread.
Wildfires have erupted in many parts of the country amid Greece’s worst heatwave in more than 30 years, tearing through tens of thousands of acres of forestland, destroying homes and businesses and killing animals.
Temperatures across Greece have been over 40C (104F) all week.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, speaking after visiting the main fire control centre in Athens on Saturday, called it a “nightmarish summer”, adding the government’s priority “has been, first and foremost, to protect human lives”.
The government planned to reimburse people affected by the fires and would designate the burned land as areas for reforestation, he said.
More than 700 firefighters, including reinforcements from Cyprus, France and Israel, have been deployed to fight the blaze north of Athens, assisted by the army and water-bombing aircraft.
Overnight, strong winds pushed the fire into the town of Thrakomakedones, where it burned homes. Residents had been ordered to evacuate and there were no immediate reports of casualties.
“[It’s] really bad,” said Thanasis Kaloudis, a resident of the town. “All of Greece has burned.”
Fires on Evia, Greece’s second biggest island, are scattered from one end on the Gulf of Euboea across to the other, facing the Aegean Sea.
Hundreds of people, including many elderly residents, were evacuated by ferry late on Friday from the town of Limni on Evia as flames reached the shore and the sky turned an apocalyptic red.
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