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In Ippokratios Politia, a village north of Athens, the flames have already reached a residential area
Photo: Thanassis Stavrakis / AP
North of the Greek capital Athens, more and more houses are falling victim to the devastating forest fires.
In the morning, real firestorms and other wildfires developed, as the Greek state television reported.
Along the central highway in Greece from Athens to northern Thessaloniki, a number of warehouses and industrial plants caught fire, it was said that there were numerous explosions.
The Greek government sent warning text messages to the residents of Malakasa and Sfendali to leave the area.
The evacuation has also been announced for the town of Oropos further north.
The affected region is only about 25 kilometers from the center of Athens.
Fires also rage, sometimes uncontrollably, on the island of Evia and the Peloponnese.
On Evia, the inhabitants of the village of Agia Anna in the northeast of the island were last brought to safety by boat across the sea.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis swore the people on hard days: Heat and drought had "turned the country into a powder keg," he said.
The head of the pulmonary clinic at Sotiria Hospital in Athens, Nina Gaga, warned the population: "Don't go out of the house," she said.
Normal protective masks against corona therefore do not help.
If you leave the house, you have to protect yourself with a mask of the type P95 and higher, according to the doctor.
At least eight dead in Turkey
The situation in Turkey also remains critical.
Even on the tenth day since the forest fires began, the emergency services failed to extinguish the fires in the southern and western Turkish coastal regions of Antalya, Marmaris, Bodrum and Milas.
In Milas, the flames engulfed several neighborhoods that had previously been evacuated.
At least eight people have already died in Turkey.
Balkan states are also fighting fires
In the Balkans, too, the disaster relief workers are continuing to fight forest fires.
However, meteorologists expect a rainy cold front for the region shortly, which should reduce the risk of fire.
In
North Macedonia
, the government declared a state of crisis on Thursday in the face of eight active fires.
The first convoys of an aid mission from Austria arrived there.
The alpine country sends a total of 136 helpers, 16 fire engines, 24 trucks and an ambulance to North Macedonia, as reported by the portal »vesti.mk«.
Help also came from Serbia, Bulgaria and Slovenia.
According to official information, all forest fires
in
Bulgaria
are now under control.
After drought and a heat wave that lasted for days, rainfalls on Friday night brought cooling and relaxation in the fire areas.
In neighboring
Albania
, there was still a serious fire in the north near Kukes on Friday, as Defense Minister Niko Peleshi said.
All other forest fires have been brought under control.
During the past week, fires in the south and in the coastal region of Vlora destroyed not only vegetation but also some farmhouses.
The
Kosovo
has since been visited by nearly 500 forest fires also burned several farms.
The fires were extinguished with the support of the NATO KFOR force stationed in Kosovo.
However, further outbreaks are feared.
fek / dpa