World

VÓLOS, Greece — Greek fire crews on Thursday scrambled to douse deadly wildfires raging for two weeks around the country before strong winds forecast for the day rekindled blazes.

Hundreds of firefighters backed by European Union reinforcements were struggling to contain the flames on the islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Evia, in addition to a new front that erupted Wednesday in central Greece.

"These are difficult and very sad days," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said.

Mitsotakis said Greece was "mourning four fellow citizens, the two aircraft pilots... and two who could not distance themselves from the inferno in time".

Five bodies have been recovered from fire-stricken areas this week, but a police source told AFP that a cattle farmer found burned on the island of Evia on Tuesday had disappeared before the fire and was not listed among the wildfire casualties.

Around the Mediterranean, fires this week also flared in Croatia and Italy, and flames killed 34 in Algeria in extreme heat that has left landscapes tinder dry.

Officials have said more than 600 wildfires have broken out around Greece since July 13, with the vast majority tackled before becoming a threat.

The civil protection ministry warned of extreme danger of fire in over a dozen Greek regions on Thursday.

A forest fire broke out on Wednesday in mountainous terrain near the Greek-Bulgarian border, and was still out of control.

Early Thursday, another fire broke out near homes in the leafy Athens suburb of Kifissia, but was swiftly extinguished.

In a town near the port city of Volos in central Greece, evacuations were ordered after fires burning since Wednesday caused an explosion in an ammunition warehouse.

"Part of the ammunition warehouse at the air force barracks in Nea Anchialos is on fire and an explosion has taken place," said fire service spokesman Yannis Artopios, adding that seven planes and three helicopters were on site to put out the blaze.

Tens of thousands of residents and tourists at the height of the busy travel season have been evacuated, including 20,000 people on Rhodes, where officials declared a state of emergency this week.

On Tuesday, two pilots died when their water-bombing plane crashed while battling a blaze in Evia.

A dangerous fire broke out Wednesday near the industrial zone of Volos, leaving two dead.

An elderly disabled woman was found dead inside her burned camper van in a coastal area near Volos, and a cattle farmer was killed while trying to rescue his livestock.

The industrial zone was closed Thursday as a precaution. Six communities and villages around the city of nearly 140,000 people were evacuated early in the morning, with more placed on standby.

Temperatures are expected to drop Thursday after a prolonged heatwave but near-gale winds are expected to complicate efforts to douse the fires.

In some cases, locals have ignored evacuation orders and stayed behind to help save their homes and bolster the badly-stretched firefighting crews.

“We have a better knowledge of the local roads and surrounding area, we can make a contribution,” Manolis Seitis, a 19-year-old student, told AFP at the village of Vati in Rhodes.

“We organise ourselves,” added Nektaria Kabouri, a 33-year-old mathematician helping to distribute water and snacks to exhausted firefighters.

“People from surrounding villages immediately came to help... these forests belong to all and we want to protect them.”

“Very high temperatures of over 40ºC  and intense winds have created fire fronts of many kilometres,” Civil Protection Minister Kikilias said, adding that crews were battling through “inconceivable fatigue”.

In Italy, three people died as a result of the fires earlier this week, with investigations underway into a potential fourth victim, after a 61-year-old woman was found dead in a lift stuck for several hours in Palermo, potentially because of an electricity blackout.

Sicily’s civil protection agency estimates fires that have swept the island in the last two days “have caused more than 60 million euros in damage”.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government Wednesday approved 10 million euros to compensate tourists whose trips to Sicily have been disrupted by the fall-out from the heatwave.

This includes those affected by the closure of Catania airport, hit by fire on July 16 and offering only a vastly reduced service since then.

Catania and surrounding areas have also suffered blackouts and water shortages in the past week that electricity suppliers blamed on heat damage to underground cables.

BRUSSELS — NATO on Wednesday condemned Russia's "dangerous" moves to block Ukrainian grain exports in the Black Sea, after urgent consultations with Kyiv following Moscow's withdrawal from a UN-backed deal.

"Allies and Ukraine strongly condemned Russia's decision to withdraw from the Black Sea grain deal and its deliberate attempts to stop Ukraine's agricultural exports on which hundreds of millions of people worldwide depend," a statement from NATO said.

"They also condemned Russia's recent missile attacks on Odesa, Mykolaiv, and other port cities, including Moscow's cynical drone attack on the Ukrainian grain storage facility in the Danube port city of Reni, very close to the Romanian border."

The 31-nation alliance said a warning from Russia to ships in the region covered NATO member Bulgaria's exclusive economic zone and "created new risks for miscalculation and escalation".

"Russia bears full responsibility for its dangerous and escalatory actions in the Black Sea region," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said.

"Russia's actions also pose substantial risks to the stability of the Black Sea region, which is of strategic importance to NATO. Allies are stepping up support to Ukraine and increasing our vigilance."

The meeting Wednesday was the second of a new NATO-Ukraine Council that was inaugurated by President Volodymyr Zelensky at the alliance’s summit in Lithuania this month.

Kyiv called the talks after Moscow unilaterally withdrew last week from the deal aimed at securing Ukraine’s exports through the Black Sea.

The council is intended to bolster political ties between NATO and Kyiv and gives Ukraine the right to ask for meetings to discuss issues of mutual concern.

Despite pressure from Zelensky, NATO leaders refused at the summit in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius to offer Ukraine a timetable for becoming a full member of the alliance.

NATO welcomed efforts from alliance member Turkey to revitalise the Black Sea deal and attempts by the UN and EU to try to keep produce flowing out of agricultural powerhouse Ukraine.

NATO said it is “stepping up surveillance and reconnaissance in the Black Sea region, including with maritime patrol aircraft and drones”.

The Black Sea is a key strategic area where NATO allies have been keen to increase their presence.

But Turkey — which controls access between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean — has been wary of allowing the rest of the US-led alliance to exert too much influence in the region.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss Ukraine with leaders of African countries, who will gather for a Russia-Africa summit hosted in Saint Petersburg later this week, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

"On July 28, Vladimir Putin is scheduled to have a working lunch with a group of leaders of African states on Ukraine issues," the Kremlin said in a statement.

Russia "appreciates the sincere efforts of the African partners for a political resolution of the conflict", the Kremlin said.

Several African leaders including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa are expected at the summit set for Thursday and Friday in Putin's native city.

The Kremlin said that 49 African countries have confirmed their participation.

At the end of the summit a declaration will be adopted outlining the "coordinated approaches to the development of Russian-African cooperation", the Kremlin added.

The end of a deal that has allowed Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea to global markets, including Africa, is set to dominate the agenda.

In the last few days, Moscow has sought to reassure African partners, saying it understands their "concern" on the issue.

At the summit's plenary session, Putin is expected to make a "big statement" that will address the issue of food and fertilisers, Kremlin foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said as quoted by Russian news agencies.

"The main attention will be paid to the prospects for the further development of relations between Africa and Russia with an emphasis on our assistance to the national sovereign development of Africans, ensuring fair access to food, fertilisers, modern technologies and energy resources," Ushakov said.

Putin will hold meetings with several African leaders, including the presidents of Cameroon, Senegal, South Africa and the Central African Republic, according to Ushakov.

The summit is the second of its kind after an inaugural one that was held in 2019 in Sochi in southern Russia.

RHODES, Greece — Two pilots died when their water-bombing plane crashed while battling a blaze on the Greek island of Evia on Tuesday, as wildfires flared across the Mediterranean.

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 defence ministry said it had declared a three-day mourning period.

The plane was among at least three other aircraft and around a hundred firefighters confronting the flames on Evia.

The accident took place as Greece battled wildfires on three major fronts, including the tourist islands of Rhodes and Corfu, with many of the country's regions listed at extreme risk of dangerous forest fires exacerbated by strong winds.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution group said Tuesday the heatwaves that have hit parts of Europe and North America this month would have been almost impossible without human-caused climate change.

“We have another difficult summer ahead of us,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos 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.

In the capital Athens the heat is expected to reach 41 degrees Celsius , and hit up to 44C in central Greece, 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.

Authorities evacuated nearly 2,500 people from Corfu on Monday, after tens of thousands of people had already fled blazes on Rhodes, 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 on Tuesday said the situation had normalised, with traffic levels consistent with the height of the summer season on one of Greece’s prime travel destinations.

Some 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.

The mercury hit 46.4C in Gythio, in the southern Peloponnese Peninsula on Sunday, shy of a 48OC national record.

Mitsotakis has warned that the country faced “another three difficult days ahead” before high temperatures are forecast to ease from Thursday.

‘Protect our home’ 

The severe heatwave in Greece has also been reflected across much of southern Europe and Northern Africa.

In Algeria at least 34 people have died as wildfires tore through residential areas, forcing mass evacuations.

Witnesses described fleeing walls of flames that raged “like a blowtorch”, and TV footage showed charred cars, burnt-out shops and smouldering scrubland.

In Italy, firefighters spent the night battling wildfires in Sicily, one of which approached so close to Palermo airport that it shut down for several hours Tuesday morning.

Italy’s Civil Protection Department on Tuesday reported “extensive fires” across the south.

In the north, a 16-year-old girl on a camping trip was among two people killed by falling trees during violent storms.

“We are experiencing in Italy one of the most complicated days in recent decades — rainstorms, tornadoes and giant hail in the north, and scorching heat and devastating fires in the centre and south,” said Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci.

In Albania’s capital Tirana, temperatures surpassed 40OC on Tuesday, spurring hospitals to open a string of emergency care centres to treat heat-related illnesses.

Hundreds of patients across the country have been treated for problems linked to the spike in temperatures, including blood pressure issues, dizziness and fainting.

MOSCOW — Ukrainian drones hit two buildings in Moscow and an ammunition depot in Russian-annexed Crimea on Monday, Russian officials said, as Ukraine reported another Russian strike on a grain facility.

Russia said it had neutralised two Ukrainian drones over Moscow during the night with no casualties reported.

One of the drones crashed close to the defence ministry in the centre of the Russian capital, while the other hit an office building in southern Moscow.

The attacks came a day after Kyiv vowed to "retaliate" for a Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port of Odesa.

AFP reporters at the scene of the strike near the ministry on Komsomolsky Prospekt saw a two-storey building with a damaged roof behind a police cordon.

"I wasn't asleep. It was 3:39am. The house really shook," Vladimir, a 70-year-old local resident, told AFP about the moment of impact.

"It is scandalous that a Ukrainian drone almost flew into the defence ministry," said Vladimir, who declined to give his last name, as he took pictures at the scene.

Polina, a 35-year-old manager out walking her dog, said her husband and child were woken by "a very loud noise right next to our house".

In Crimea, Moscow-installed Governor Sergei Aksyonov said Russian forces shot down 11 Ukrainian drones.

He said an ammunition depot was "hit" and a private house "damaged", without providing further details.

Aksyonov said villages near the depot were being evacuated.

Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, has been targeted by Kyiv throughout Moscow’s Ukraine offensive but has come under more intense, increased attacks in recent weeks.

Kyiv has repeatedly said it plans to take back Crimea.

Meanwhile, in southern Ukraine’s Odesa region, officials reported a four-hour Russian drone attack on port infrastructure on the Danube River.

“As a result of the strikes, a grain hangar was destroyed, tanks for storing other types of cargo were damaged,” Ukraine’s southern military command said on Telegram.

The Danube delta region, which spans across Romania and Ukraine, is being used as an export route for Ukrainian grain.

Russia last week pulled out of a key deal which had allowed the safe export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.

Since then Kyiv has accused Russia of targeting grain supplies and infrastructure vital to grain exports.

Ukraine’s military said it shot down three of the drones used in Monday’s attack.

“According to initial reports, about four workers of the port were injured, but the information is still being clarified,” it said.

Russia’s defence ministry branded the Moscow drone attack a “terrorist act”.

“Two Ukrainian drones were suppressed and crashed. There are no casualties,” it said.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drone strikes occurred at around 4:00am local time (01:00 GMT).

“There was no serious damage,” he said.

The RIA Novosti news agency posted a video of the business centre, with some damage visible to the top of the tall building.

The road around it was closed.

Moscow and its environs lie around 500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border but have been hit by several drone attacks this year, with one even hitting the Kremlin in May.

Earlier this month, Russia said it had downed five Ukrainian drones that disrupted the functioning of Moscow’s Vnukovo international airport.

After Russian strikes on Odesa, President Volodymyr Zelensky had vowed retaliation on Sunday.

“They will definitely feel this,” he said.

“We cannot allow people around the world to get used to terrorist attacks,” Zelensky added.

“The target of all these missiles is not just cities, villages or people. Their target is humanity and the foundations of our entire European culture.”

A strike on the city on Sunday killed two people and severely damaged a historic cathedral.

Clergymen rescued icons from rubble inside the badly damaged Transfiguration Cathedral, which was demolished under Stalin in 1936 and rebuilt in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Ukrainian government condemned the cathedral strike as a “war crime”, saying it had been “destroyed twice: By Stalin and Putin”.

RHODES, Greece — Authorities evacuated nearly 2,500 people from the Greek island of Corfu on Monday as the prime minister warned that the heat-battered nation was "at war" with several wildfires.

Tens of thousands of people have already fled blazes on the island of Rhodes, with many frightened tourists scrambling to get home on evacuation flights.

About 2,400 visitors and locals were evacuated from the Ionian tourist island of Corfu from Sunday into Monday, a fire service spokesman said, adding that the departures were a precaution.

"We are at war and are exclusively geared towards the fire front," Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament in Athens, warning that the nation faced "another three difficult days ahead" before high temperatures are forecast to ease.

Greece has been sweltering under a lengthy spell of extreme heat that has exacerbated wildfire risk and left visitors stranded in peak tourist season.

Because of the wildfires, an annual celebration on Monday to mark the 1974 restoration of democracy in Greece was cancelled.

Kelly Squirrel, a transport administrator from the United Kingdom, said police had ordered people from her hotel on Rhodes to evacuate.

"We had to keep walking," she told AFP at the international airport. "So we walked for about six hours in the heat."

Rhodes, which counted 2.5 million visitor arrivals in 2022, is one of Greece's leading holiday destinations.

Greek television broadcast images of long lines of people, some in beachwear, lugging suitcases along the island's roads on Saturday, when the evacuations were ordered.

More extreme 

heat expected 

Some 30,000 people fled the flames on Rhodes at the weekend, the country's largest-ever wildfire evacuation.

Police said 16,000 people had been transported on land and 3,000 evacuated by sea. Others had to flee by road or used their own transport after being told to leave the area.

“We are exhausted and traumatised,” said Daniel-Cladin Schmidt, a 42-year-old German tourist waiting to be evacuated with his wife and nine-year-old son.

“There were thousands of people, the buses couldn’t pass, we had to walk for more than two hours,” he told AFP at Rhodes airport.

“We couldn’t breathe, we just covered our faces and moved forward.”

Holiday makers and some locals spent the night in gyms, schools and hotel conference centres on the island.

In the departures hall of the international airport, AFP saw groups of tourists sleeping on the floor, surrounded by luggage.

“We had to lend a woman some of my wife’s clothes because she had nothing to wear,” Kevin Sales, an engineer from England, told AFP. “It was terrible.”

‘Hell’ 

Several travel companies have halted their inbound tourist flights to Rhodes, and have been helping to ferry foreigners home.

“We ran 10 kilometres with all our luggage to escape the flames,” while the temperature was 42ºC, said German tourist Lena Schwarz, after arriving at Hanover airport overnight Sunday into Monday.

The 38-year-old told AFP their journey leaving Rhodes was “hell on Earth”.

Oxana Neb, 50, also arriving at Hanover, said the evacuation had been “very bad”.

“We stayed in the hotel until the end and fire came from all sides,” she said.

She joined other guests running to the beach, eventually abandoning her suitcases on the way, she said.

Crews have been battling the flames in parts of Greece for about a week, and firefighters were using aircraft from dawn on Monday to try to douse the flames on Rhodes.

Many regions were under extreme risk of forest fires on Monday but no towns were directly threatened by flames, the fire service told AFP.

Like every summer, Greece is plagued by forest fires, often deadly, ravaging tens of thousands of hectares of forest and vegetation.

“While not uncommon in southern Europe, what was unusual about the fires in Rhodes was the intensity and the speed at which they spread,” Douglas Kelley, a land surface modeller at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said.

This summer, Greece experienced one of the longest heatwaves in recent years, according to experts, with the thermometer hitting 45ºC at the weekend.

Temperatures eased Monday but were expected to to pick up again on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Rhodes remains at the highest level of fire alert.

NOUMEA — President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that France needed a return to authority "at every level" in response to recent riots sparked by the police shooting of a teenager.

The killing of Nahel M., 17, during a traffic stop last month prompted protests, riots and looting, with many accusing the government of allowing a culture of institutional racism in the police force to fester.

Condemning "the burning of schools, city halls, gyms and libraries" and "the violence of looting", Macron said: "The lesson I draw from his is order, order, order."

Speaking on French television during a trip to New Caledonia, Macron added that "order must prevail. There is no freedom without order", he said.

"Our country needs a return to authority at every level, starting with the family," he said.

"We must invest massively in our youth to provide them with a framework," Macron said.

The president also reiterated his previous criticism of the role of social networks during the riots and looting, saying "public digital order" was needed "to stop excesses".

He said many young people used social media to organise meetups and riots, and even "to enter into competition with each other" during the riots.

Of the around 1,300 people being prosecuted for their alleged role in the riots, nearly half are under 18.

The most intense urban violence since 2005 sparked a debate about law and order, immigration, racism and police brutality.

Following a reshuffle of his Cabinet, Macron warned last week that the riots had highlighted "a risk of fragmentation, of deep division, of the nation".

There is a "need for authority and respect", he told Friday's Cabinet meeting, and asked the new government "to draw the lessons from what happened, and provide sound answers".

New Caledonia is the first stop of Macron's Pacific trip which also includes Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea and during which he is expected to lay out a "French alternative" for a region marked by China-US tensions, his office said last week.

ATHENS — Around 30,000 people were moved to safety on the Greek island of Rhodes where a wildfire burned on Saturday, while people in the southern United States struggled under a record-breaking heatwave.

Tens of millions of people have been suffering through intense heat this summer and the world looks set for its hottest July on record.

As temperature records tumble, experts have pointed to climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels, arguing that global warming is playing a key role in the devastating heat.

On the Mediterranean island of Rhodes, where a wildfire has been blazing for days, boats carried 2,000 people to safety from beaches in the east of the popular tourist island.

Greek fire service spokesman Vassilis Varthakogiannis told Skai TV: “This is not a fire that will be over tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. It’ll be troubling us for days.”

Three coastguard ships led more than 30 private vessels in the evacuation, while a Greek navy boat was heading to the area.

Island officials arranged for dozens of buses to take people to safety, but where fires had cut off road access, others had to walk.

Authorities have opened up gyms, schools and hotel conference centres to serve as makeshift accommodation, while firefighters battle the blaze.

In Athens, the foreign ministry said it had activated its crisis management unit to facilitate the evacuation of foreign citizens due to the ongoing forest fires.

Greece is fighting dozens of forest fires 11 days into a heatwave that has seen temperatures soaring above 40ºC. Meteorologists have warned it could be the longest hot spell the country has ever seen.

80 million Americans sweltering 

Across the southern United States, about 80 million Americans will swelter in temperatures of 41ºC and above this weekend, the National Weather Service said.

The southwestern city of Phoenix, Arizona hit 46ºC on Saturday, extending a record-breaking streak to 22 consecutive days of highs above 43ºC.

Tourists have been flocking to Death Valley National Park, which straddles California and Nevada, to post selfies with a temperature display outside the visitor centre.

Many are hoping to see it break a world record of 56.7ºC, which was set in July 1913 but was likely the result of a faulty measurement, according to several meteorologists.

Further north, in Canada, which has been suffering wildfires that left Montreal blanketed in smog, torrential rain hit the eastern province of Nova Scotia, cutting off roads and threatening to burst a dam.

Four people were reported missing, including two children who had been in a car engulfed by flood waters.

Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 active wildfires were burning across Canada, with 11.3 million hectares scorched this season by the deadly blazes. Across the border in the US state of Washington, a wildfire burned more than 12,000 hectares in less than a day.

Hottest month 

July 2023 is on track to be the hottest month — not only since records began, but also in “hundreds, if not thousands, of years”, said leading NASA Climatologist Gavin Schmidt.

The effects cannot be attributed solely to the El Nino weather pattern, which “has really only just emerged” and isn’t expected to strengthen until later in the year, he added.

El Nino is associated with the warming of ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Schmidt said the trend of extreme heat was expected to persist, “and the reason why we think that’s going to continue, is because we continue to put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”.

The exceptional temperatures in Greece also meant key tourist sites such as the Acropolis closed during the hottest part of the day.

A 46-year-old man was reported to have succumbed to heatstroke on the central Greek island of Evia after being admitted to Chalkida hospital. Staff there said cardio-respiratory failure following exposure to high temperatures appeared to have been the cause.

Emergency health officials told the state broadcaster they had admitted at least 38 heatstroke patients in the last three days, while hospitals were also seeing cases of fainting and other heat-related conditions.

Greece is just one of many countries battling a prolonged spell of extreme heat around the globe in recent days.