{"id":669580,"date":"2026-07-02T10:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T10:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/669580\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T10:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T10:10:12","slug":"wildfires-in-france-and-greece-leave-at-least-two-people-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/669580\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildfires in France and Greece leave at least two people dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Authorities have urged residents of two villages in central Greece to evacuate as more than 135 firefighters battle a wildfire, a day after a separate forest fire killed a father and his 12-year-old son.<\/p>\n

Firefighters on Wednesday, local time, identified a body found inside a home destroyed by the fire the previous day as that of the boy.<\/p>\n

His father’s body was found Tuesday outside the property, which was in a woodland area north-east of the northern city of Thessaloniki.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A fire broke out about 25 kilometres from the port city of Thessaloniki. (AP: Giannis Papanikos)<\/p>\n

The boy’s mother is being treated for burns in a hospital.<\/p>\n

Wednesday’s fire was burning through forest and agricultural land in the central Greek region of Fthiotida, the fire department said.<\/p>\n

Nineteen water-dropping planes, six helicopters and 135 firefighters backed up by volunteers and special forest fire units were tackling the blaze.<\/p>\n

At least three other wildfires broke out in Greece on Wednesday \u2014 one in the northern region of Halkidiki, another on the island of Salamina, near the Greek capital, and a third in southern Greece.<\/p>\n

All three were quickly contained, the fire department said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A fire broke out in bushland on Tuesday afternoon, near Thessaloniki. (Reuters: Alexandros Avramidis)<\/p>\n

While Greece suffers frequent wildfires during its hot, dry summers, it has so far been spared the heatwaves that have scorched much of western Europe in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius in parts of Europe, including France and Germany, at the end of June<\/a>.<\/p>\n

France on ‘red alert’ as temps hit 40C in Europe heatwave<\/a><\/p>\n

Half of France is set to be placed on “red alert” as temperatures climb beyond 40 degrees Celsius across mainland Europe.<\/p>\n

Scientists have said the heatwave, which began on June 20, was \u200cthe worst recorded in Europe, and the blistering conditions disrupted power generation, damaged infrastructure and overwhelmed healthcare systems.<\/p>\n

Wildfires also break out across southern France<\/p>\n

Emergency services were also tackling a large wildfire in the south-east of France on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of firefighters were mobilised to battle the blaze in the Herault and Aude departments, close to the border with Spain, fuelled by drought and strong winds.<\/p>\n

Water-dumping aircraft were being used.<\/p>\n

Temperatures of around 30C combined with strong wind gusts drove the spread of the fire through low, very dry vegetation.<\/p>\n

About 200 people were evacuated or confined in the villages of Pouzols\u2011Minervois and Mailhac, officials said.<\/p>\n

AP\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Authorities have urged residents of two villages in central Greece to evacuate as more than 135 firefighters battle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[29322,1397,224207,819,2043,224206,5979,1103,90,56,54,55,1068,8948],"class_list":["post-669580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-emergency-services","tag-environment","tag-firefighting","tag-france","tag-greece","tag-greek","tag-heat","tag-heatwave","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-weather","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}