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 and spoke of three difficult days ahead.
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.
Fires were also burning on Greece’s second largest island of Evia on Monday.
“We are at war and are exclusively geared toward 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.
Vassilis Kikilias, Greece’s civil protection minister, said crews had battled over 500 fires around the country for 12 straight days.
Greece has been sweltering under a lengthy spell of extreme heat that has exacerbated wildfire risk and left visitors stranded in peak tourist season.
The government’s speedy evacuation came after a tragedy in 2018 when over 100 people perished in Greece’s deadliest forest fire at Mati, near Athens, which Mitsotakis on Monday said still “haunts us all.”
Because of the wildfires, an annual celebration on Monday to mark the 1974 restoration of democracy in Greece was canceled.
Rhodes, which counted 2.5 million visitor arrivals in 2022, is one of Greece’s leading holiday destinations.
Travel giant TUI on Monday said it was suspending holiday packages to Rhodes until Friday.
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.
“We walked for about six hours in the heat,” Kelly Squirrel, a transport administrator from the United Kingdom, told AFP at Rhodes airport.
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 traumatized,” 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 the 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 centers 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.”
Several travel companies have halted their inbound tourist flights to Rhodes, and have been helping to ferry foreigners home.
“We ran 10 kilometers (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 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.
Like every summer, Greece is plagued by forest fires, often deadly, ravaging tens of thousands of hectares of forest and vegetation.
This summer, Greece experienced one of the longest heatwaves in recent years, according to experts, with the thermometer hitting 45 degrees Celsius at the weekend.
Temperatures eased Monday but were expected to to pick up again on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Rhodes on Tuesday remains at the highest level of fire alert, alongside Crete.
Thousands more evacuated as Greece ‘at war’ with forest fires
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Thousands more evacuated as Greece ‘at war’ with forest fires
- About 2,400 visitors and locals were evacuated from the Ionian tourist island of Corfu from Sunday into Monday
- Speedy evacuation comes after a tragedy in 2018 when over 100 people perished in Greece’s deadliest forest fire at Mati, near Athens
Trump says Iran ‘want to negotiate’ after reports of hundreds killed in protests
- US President Donald Trump said Sunday that Iran’s leadership had called him seeking “to negotiate” after he repeatedly threatened to intervene militarily if Tehran killed protesters
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Sunday that Iran’s leadership had called him seeking “to negotiate” after he repeatedly threatened to intervene militarily if Tehran killed protesters.
For two weeks, Iran has been rocked by a protest movement that has swelled in spite of a crackdown rights groups warn has become a “massacre.”
Initially sparked by anger over the rising cost of living, the demonstrations have evolved into a serious challenge of the theocratic system in place since the 1979 revolution.
Information has continued to trickle out of Iran despite a days-long Internet shutdown, with videos filtering out of capital Tehran and other cities over the past three nights showing large demonstrations.
As reports emerge of a growing protest death toll, and images show bodies piled outside a morgue, Trump said Tehran indicated its willingness to talk.
“The leaders of Iran called” yesterday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that “a meeting is being set up... They want to negotiate.”
He added, however, that “we may have to act before a meeting.”
The US-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) said it had received “eyewitness accounts and credible reports indicating that hundreds of protesters have been killed across Iran during the current Internet shutdown.”
“A massacre is unfolding,” it said.
The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) said it confirmed the killing of at least 192 protesters but that the actual toll could be much higher.
“Unverified reports indicate that at least several hundreds, and according to some sources, more than 2,000 people may have been killed,” said IHR.
More than 2,600 protesters have been arrested, IHR estimates.
A video circulating on Sunday showed dozens of bodies accumulating outside a morgue south of Tehran.
The footage, geolocated by AFP to Kahrizak, showed bodies wrapped in black bags, with what appeared to be grieving relatives searching for loved ones.
Near paralysis
In Tehran, an AFP journalist described a city in a state of near paralysis.
The price of meat has nearly doubled since the start of the protests, and many shops are closed. Those that do open must close at around 4:00 or 5:00 pm, when security forces deploy en masse.
There were fewer videos showing protests on social media Sunday, but it was not clear to what extent that was due to the Internet shutdown.
One widely shared video showed protesters again gathering in the Pounak district of Tehran shouting slogans in favor of the ousted monarchy.
The protests have become one of the biggest challenges to the rule of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, coming in the wake of Israel’s 12-day war against the Islamic republic in June, which was backed by the United States.
State TV has aired images of burning buildings, including a mosque, as well as funeral processions for security personnel.
But after three days of mass actions, state outlets were at pains to present a picture of calm returning, broadcasting images of smooth-flowing traffic on Sunday. Tehran Governor Mohammad-Sadegh Motamedian insisted in televised comments that “the number of protests is decreasing.”
The Iranian government on Sunday declared three days of national mourning for “martyrs” including members of the security forces killed.
President Masoud Pezeshkian also urged Iranians to join a “national resistance march” Monday to denounce the violence.
In response to Trump’s repeated threats to intervene, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran would hit back, calling US military and shipping “legitimate targets” in comments broadcast by state TV.
‘Stand with the people’
Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s ousted shah, who has emerged as an anti-government figurehead, said he was prepared to return to the country and lead a democratic transition.
“I’m already planning on that,” he told Fox News on Sunday.
He later urged Iran’s security forces and government workers to join the demonstrators.
“Employees of state institutions, as well as members of the armed and security forces, have a choice: stand with the people and become allies of the nation, or choose complicity with the murderers of the people,” he said in a social media post.
He also urged protesters to replace the flags outside of Iranian embassies.
“The time has come for them to be adorned with Iran’s national flag,” he said.
The ceremonial, pre-revolution flag has become an emblem of the global rallies that have mushroomed in support of Iran’s demonstrators.
In London, protesters managed over the weekend to swap out the Iranian embassy flag, hoisting in its place the tri-colored banner used under the last shah.
