Two people died and and hundreds were evacuated after two fires broke out “almost simultaneously” on a Greek island near Athens, officials said.<\/p>\n
About 200 firefighters were working to keep the twin fires from converging on the island of Salamina, which was under a high wildfire risk on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The first blaze was reported at 14:40 local time (11:40 GMT) near the island’s south coast and spread rapidly due to high winds, followed by the second some 20 minutes later in the east.<\/p>\n
More than 500 people have so far been evacuated by sea, Greek media report. The cause of the fires is not yet known.<\/p>\n
Five patrol boats have been sent to the area and several other private vessels are being made available for assistance, he added. A number of aircraft and 50 fire engines have also been deployed.<\/p>\n
The first blaze broke out in a mixed residential and forested area in Peristeria, a southern city on the island, fire official Vasilios Vathrakoyannis said in a statement, followed by the second in the eastern town of Selinia.<\/p>\n
Firefighters attending the first blaze found two bodies at the scene, he said.<\/p>\n
At least 10 people suffered burns or showed “symptoms of smoke inhalation”, five of whom had been taken for treatment locally, Greek Health Minister Adonis Georgiades said on X.<\/p>\n
Salamina Deputy Mayor Thodoris Zannis said firefighters were trying to keep the fires from burning over a mountain on the island and meeting to form a single blaze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two people died and and hundreds were evacuated after two fires broke out “almost simultaneously” on a Greek…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-740053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740053","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=740053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}