Vólos, Greece - Greek fire crews on Thursday scrambled to douse deadly wildfires raging for two weeks around the country before strong winds forecast for the day rekindle blazes.
Hundreds of firefighters backed by European Union reinforcements were struggling to contain the flames on the islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Evia, in addition to a new front that erupted Wednesday in central Greece.
"These are are difficult and very sad days," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said.
Mitsotakis said Greece was "mourning four fellow citizens, the two aircraft pilots... and two who could not distance themselves from the inferno in time."
Five bodies have been recovered from fire-stricken areas this week, but a police source told AFP that a cattle farmer found burned on the island of Evia on Tuesday had disappeared before the fire and was not listed among the casualties.
Around the Mediterranean, fires this week also flared in Croatia and Italy, and flames killed 34 in Algeria in extreme heat that has left landscapes tinder dry.
Mass evacuations
Officials have said more than 600 wildfires have broken out around Greece since July 13.
The vast majority were tackled before they could pose a threat, the government said.
The civil protection ministry has warned of an extreme danger of fire in over a dozen Greek regions on Thursday.
A forest fire broke out Wednesday in mountainous terrain in Haskovo, near the Greek-Bulgarian border, and was still out of control.
Early Thursday, another fire broke out near homes in the leafy Athens suburb of Kifissia but was swiftly extinguished.
Tens of thousands of residents and tourists at the height of the busy travel season have been evacuated, including 20,000 people on Rhodes, where officials declared a state of emergency this week.
A dangerous fire broke out Wednesday near the industrial zone of the central city of Volos, leaving two dead.
An elderly disabled woman was found dead inside her burned camper van in a coastal area near Volos and a cattle farmer was killed while trying to rescue his livestock.
On Tuesday, two pilots died when their water-bombing plane crashed while battling a blaze in Evia.
The industrial zone was closed Thursday as a precaution. Six communities and villages around the city of nearly 140,000 people were evacuated early in the morning, with more placed on standby.
Temperatures are expected to drop Thursday after a prolonged heatwave but near-gale winds are expected to complicate efforts to douse the fires.
Compensation
"Very high temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and intense winds have created fire fronts of many kilometres," Civil Protection Minister Kikilias said, adding that crews were battling through "inconceivable fatigue."
The EU crisis management commissioner's office on Wednesday said over 490 firefighters and seven planes had been deployed to different areas in Greece under the bloc's civil protection mechanism.
In Italy, three people died as a result of the fires earlier this week, with investigations underway into a potential fourth victim, after a 61-year-old woman was found dead in a lift stuck for several hours in Palermo, potentially because of an electricity blackout.
Sicily's civil protection agency estimates the fires that have swept the island in the last two days "have caused more than 60 million euros in damage".
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government late Wednesday approved 10 million euros to compensate tourists whose trips to Sicily have been disrupted by the fall-out from the heatwave.
This includes those affected by the closure of Catania airport, which suffered a fire in the main terminal on July 16 and has been offering only a vastly reduced service since then.
Catania and surrounding areas have also suffered blackouts and water shortages in the past week that electricity suppliers blamed on heat damage to underground cables.
AFP