guardian

The battle to contain wildfires across Greece continued for a seventh straight day

firefighters struggled to extinguish flames amid scenes of pandemonium

With the aid of water-dropping planes, authorities worked around the clock to tame numerous fires.

With the aid of water-dropping planes, authorities worked around the clock to tame numerous fires.

efforts were being concentrated on dousing blazes raging on the islands of Evia and Corfu

Holidaymakers recounted panic-stricken moments of being transported at the weekend in the middle of the night in army trucks to beaches before being placed on Greek navy ships.

Greece experienced the hottest temperatures in 50 years at the weekend, with the mercury reaching 45C in the central region of Thessaly.

In the face of strong and erratic winds fanning flames, civil protection officials in Athens said they had been left with little choice other than to enact what they called a “precautionary” operation to move tourists out of harm’s way on Rhodes.

Government experts are scheduled to fly into Rhodes and other fire-hit regions in the coming days to assess the scale of the disaster – expected to be hugely costly – so that the process of compensatory payments can begin.

But for now the emphasis has been on salvaging the image of Greece as a tourist destination in the face of such disaster.

With that crisis, an entire liberal ambition becomes thwarted.

Firefighters struggled to extinguish flames destroying forests and citrus and hazelnut groves.

The official TAP news agency reported one death, that of a school principal who died of asphyxiation from a fire in Nafza

Milan residents reported torrential rain and hail on Tuesday morning, which flooded streets and uprooted trees, some of which fell on to parked cars.

In Turkey, a hospital and a dozen homes were evacuated as a precaution in the coastal town of Kemer, where firefighters for a third day battled a blaze raging through a woodland.

One killed as ship carrying 3,000 cars catches fire off Dutch coast

We are now trying to extinguish the fire in cooperation with the local authorities of [the] Netherlands