ALEXANDROUPOLIS (dpa-AFX) – With sometimes stormy winds, at least five large forest fires in Greece have spread uncontrollably during the night. The north-east Greek port city of Alexandroupolis was particularly hard hit on Tuesday morning. There, the fire, which has been burning for the fourth straight day, has reached settlements near the city. Firefighters and residents battled the blazes throughout the night, state television showed. Numerous towns were evacuated.
The city’s university hospital also had to be evacuated during the night – 175 people, including children and infants, were accommodated on a ferry or transferred to hospitals in other cities, as reported by the Skai broadcaster.
The major fires in the Dadia National Park in the north-east of the country continue to rage unchecked. According to media reports, a migrant died there from smoke poisoning. Migrants who entered Greece illegally from Turkey via the border river Evros are always hiding in the forest of Dadia.
The plumes of smoke from the massive source of fire are so large that they can still be clearly seen hundreds of kilometers away, as satellite images have shown. In the morning, the wind drove the clouds of smoke across central Greece far out to the Ionian Sea in the west.
Fires are also raging on the second largest Greek island of Euboea, near the port city of Kavala, on the island of Kythnos and in the Boeotia region northwest of the capital Athens./axa/DP/mis