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Agence France-Presse

Authorities evacuated nearly 2,500 people from the Greek island of Corfu on Monday as 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, 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.
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 said 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.
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 evacuated 3,000 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 said at Rhodes airport.
“We couldn’t breathe, we just covered our faces and moved forward.”
Holidaymakers and some locals spent the night in gyms, schools and hotel conference centres on the island.
In the departures hall of the international airport, Agence France-Presse 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 Agence France-Presse. “It was terrible.”
Several travel companies have halted their inbound tourist flights to Rhodes, and have been helping to ferry foreigners home.
“We ran 10 kilometres (six miles) with all our luggage to escape the flames”, while the temperature was 42 degrees Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit), said German tourist Lena Schwarz, after arriving at Hanover airport overnight Sunday into Monday.


The 38-year-old said 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 from dawn on Monday using aircraft to try to douse the flames on Rhodes.
According to the authorities, many regions were under extreme risk of forest fires on Monday, but no towns were directly threatened by flames, the fire service told Agence France-Presse.
Like every summer, Greece is plagued by forest fires, often deadly, ravaging tens of thousands of hectares of forest and vegetation.
‘Extreme weather events’: Asia set for supercharged heat as El Nino looms
This summer, the country experienced one of the longest heatwaves in recent years, according to experts, with the thermometer hitting 45 degrees Celsius at the weekend.
On Monday, the heat was expected to ease slightly with temperatures expected to reach 37C in Athens, but on Tuesday, it was forecast to pick up again.
Italy also bracing for extreme heat
Extreme weather is devastating southern Europe this summer, from hailstorms and a tornado in Italy, to heavy rainfall and strong winds that left several dead in parts of western Balkans. A record temperature of 50C is forecast for the south of the Italian island of Sardinia on Monday, which would eclipse the European high of 48.8C, set in Sicily two years ago.
Following the hottest ever June, temperature records are being broken from the US to China. Climate change, triggered by fossil fuel emissions, is raising the intensity and duration of summer heatwaves across the Northern Hemisphere, raising questions over whether swathes of the planet are becoming uninhabitable.
Cooler weather is set to continue in Northern Europe with temperatures in the UK, Germany, France and Nordic countries below seasonal averages. London will peak at 18C, 5C below seasonal averages according to forecaster Maxar Technologies Inc.
Additional reporting by Associated Press, Bloomberg


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Extreme weather

Greece ‘at war’ with fires, as people evacuated from ‘hell on Earth’

A firefighter watches as a wildfire burns on the island of Rhodes. Large fires have broken out throughout Greece, which has been suffering a prolonged drought. Photo: dpa

 A firefighter tries to put out a wildfire on the Greek Island of Rhodes. Photo: dpa

Rhodes blaze evacuation biggest ever for fire in Greece: 30,000 people moved to safety

The gutted remains of cars lie on a road on Sunday after a wildfire on the island of Rhodes in Greece. Photo: via AP

Tourists rest in an airport departure hall on the Greek island of Rhodes amid evacuations due to wildfires on Sunday. Photo: AFP

Tourists sit in the back of a truck in Rhodes, Greece, as they are evacuated during wildfires. Photo: AFP stringer

Crowds wait to be evacuated in Rhodes, Greece, as wildfires burn. Photo: Instagram rhodes.rodos via Reuters

With record heat and drought-stricken woods, Spain’s Catalonia faces perfect wildfire conditions

Firefighters try to extinguish a forest fire in Fuente la Reina, Castellon de la Plana, Spain, in March 2023. Spain suffered the biggest losses from wildfires of any European Union country last year amid a record-hot 2022. Photo: AP

Dry cracked earth near the Sau reservoir, north of Barcelona, Spain, in April 2023. Photo: AP

Firefighters work at the scene of a wildfire in Tabara, northwest Spain, in July 2022. Photo: AP

A forest burns during a wildfire near Altura, eastern Spain, in August 2022. Photo: AP

Burning ball: dangerously high record heatwaves sweep the world from US to Japan via Europe

The United States national flag surrounded by flames during a fire in California. Photo: AFP

In New York a man beats the heat in the fountain in Washington Square Park. Photo: dpa

A warning signpost alerts visitors of heat dangers in Death Valley National Park, California. Photo: Getty Images

Tourists rest on a bench under the shadows of pine trees at the Oranges park in Rome during an intense heatwave. Photo: AP

Heat haze around St. Peter’s Dome in Rome as temperatures get close to 40C in some parts of Italy. Photo: AP 

An aircraft drops fire retardant during the Rabbit fire Moreno Valley in Riverside County, Californian on July 14. Photo: AFP

From China to the US, how El Nino is helping drive heatwaves and extreme weather

The entire planet has experienced unofficial heat records this month due unusually hot conditions due to climate change and a strong El Nino event. Photo: AP

Experts are warning that rice production across South and Southeast Asia is likely to suffer with the world heading into an El Nino. Photo: AP

A man cools off at an urban beach at Madrid Rio park in Madrid as the planet swelters due to unusually hot conditions due to climate change and a strong El Nino event. Photo: AP

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Some 30,000 people fled the flames on Rhodes at the weekend, the country’s largest-ever wildfire evacuation
Some 162 fires have been reported across Greece over the last 24 hours


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


Greece ‘at war’ with fires, as people evacuated from ‘hell on Earth’

Some 30,000 people fled the flames on Rhodes at the weekend, the country’s largest-ever wildfire evacuation Some 162 fires have been reported across Greece over the last 24 hours

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

Some 162 fires have been reported across Greece over the last 24 hours