Evacuated houses, destroyed villages, burned forests – violent forest and bush fires have been terrifying people in southern Europe for days. A couple from Germany died in Turkey.
Athens / Istanbul – In parts of southern Europe and Turkey, people continue to fight violent forest fires and extreme heat.
In Turkey, where eight people have been killed so far, a German-Turkish couple also died, as reported by the Turkish media. The man and the woman were found lifeless on a path near their home in Manavgat in the Antalya region, wrote the government-affiliated Turkish news agency Demirören Haber Ajansi (DHA). The Foreign Office did not confirm the reports on Tuesday.
156 fires broke out in the country last week, according to the Turkish communications directorate. 146 of them were brought under control on Tuesday morning. The fires are mainly raging on the Mediterranean coast, particularly in the regions of Antalya, Mugla and Adana. Many regions were evacuated, many villages and areas of land were destroyed by the flames, and numerous animals could not be saved.
Meanwhile, a fire in the northern suburbs of the capital, Athens, spiraled out of control in Greece on Tuesday. The flames were already reaching the first houses in the suburbs of Varybobi and Acharnes. “Leave your homes immediately,” said the mayor of Acharnes, Spyros Vrettos, on state television (ERT). Residents left the affected areas in a panic. “Hell is behind us,” a resident yelled from his car to local reporters.
On the island of Rhodes, the fire brigade fought on Tuesday night against a forest and bush fire in a ravine near the village of Maritsa, the village had to be evacuated. Tourist facilities were not threatened. All of Greece has been hit by a historic heat wave for more than a week. In Athens, the thermometers showed 44 degrees on Tuesday afternoon.
In Italy, where violent forest fires also raged in the south of the country, on the large islands and partly on the Adriatic coast, the situation improved somewhat, as the fire brigade announced. On Tuesday morning, 1130 missions were reported across the country in the past 24 hours due to bushfires. The police arrested two arsonists in Sicily on Monday. The Carabinieri caught the two men red-handed in the central province of Enna, aged 80 and 25, according to a statement on Tuesday.
In the coastal town of Pescara in the Abruzzo region, pine and pine trees last burned in a well-known nature reserve. The police started the investigation into the cause. Houses were evacuated and numerous people were brought to safety. In Puglia, too, the emergency services fought day and night against flames in the town of Gravina in Puglia. In the small region of Molise, around 1000 people had to temporarily leave their homes near Campobasso on Monday because of the flames. dpa
