Greek firefighters rescued a group of 25 migrants trapped in a forest in northeastern Greece as a vast wildfire approached on Friday (September 1).
The fire department said the group had become trapped between two villages in the Evros region, near the border with Turkey. No injuries were reported, reported the Associated Press.There was no information on the nationalities of those rescued.
The Wildfire, which has been burning for two weeks, is believed to have caused the deaths of 20 people whose bodies were found last week – all were reportedly migrants who had recently crossed the border. Greece’s Disaster Victim Identification Team has been tasked with identifying the remains.
This summer, Greece has been affected by hundreds of wildfires across the country, with dozens of new blazes breaking out each day. Most are extinguished quickly before they spread, but the Evros blaze has proved particularly tough to control.
Arson is suspected in some of the smaller fires that were quickly brought under control, and several people, all Greeks, have been arrested in the past two weeks. The causes of the major fires are still under investigation.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis – speaking in Parliament on Thursday – implied that migrants may have been responsible for the Evros fire in the northeastern border region, even though he noted an investigation into the causes is still ongoing.
Last week, three men – two Greeks and one Albanian national – were charged with rounding up 13 people from Syria and Pakistan and forcing them into a car trailer, accusing them of setting fires.
On Friday, a court ordered the three – who have since been held under house arrest – to be jailed pending trial.
