ACHARNES: Hundreds of firefighters in Greece struggled Thursday to extinguish major wildfires burning for a 6th day, leaving twenty dead and prompting growing outrage among affected residents.
A dangerous fire raged for a second day on Mount Parnitha close to Athens, in the largest forest adjoining the capital city, threatening a national park, AFP reported.
Fire service spokesman Yiannis Artopios said that there was an “explosion of fire” in a forest ravine early Thursday that renewed the risk to inhabited areas.
In the Menidi district at the foothills of Parnitha, where many people have lost homes, there was anger at the perceived failure of the state authorities to protect properties for yet another summer.
Nikos Lazarou, a 32-year-old mechanic, said that he was furious about blaze breaking out every year.
The same area had also been hit in 2021 by a big wildfire that burned part of a national park. He said that the authorities need to take steps.
A local deputy mayor Nikos Xagoraris, said that the state really needed to stiffen penalties for blaze, this cannot go on, the whole country has burnt.
Largest wildfires front
The largest blaze front was in northern Greece, where a major fire that erupted on Saturday close to the port city of Alexandroupoli has now formed a unified front of over fifteen kilometres.
The bodies of nineteen people believed to be migrants, two of them kids, were found in the area this week.
Authorities have warned that as the area is a popular entry point for smugglers from neighbouring Tukiye, more casualties are expected to be found among asylum seekers who could not escape the blaze.
A third mega fire was in Boeotia, north of Athens, where a one thousand-year-old UNESCO-listed Byzantine monastery Hosios Loukas narrowly escaped devastation on Wednesday.
The civil protection ministry said that the greater Athens area, near Boeotia and the Evia island, were the regions most at risk of new fire outbreaks on Thursday.
