Greece Fights Dozens of Wildfires in 'Most Difficult Day of Year'

Firefighters were battling a series of wildfires near the Greek capital Athens on Sunday evening, as the country braces for another scorching summer.
Greece faces a tough wildfire season after its warmest winter and earliest heatwave on record, with temperatures hitting 44°C (111°F), said AFP.
"Today in Attica two extremely dangerous fires that broke out in residential areas and spread rapidly due to strong winds in Keratea and Stamata were tackled", Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vasilis Kikilias said late on Sunday.
He said there was no longer an active front in Stamata, north of Athens, though there were some minor reignitions in the eastern area of Keratea.
He said "ground forces will remain in the field throughout the night".
Since Sunday midday, the authorities have called for the evacuation of at least eight areas near the capital, with flames destroying cars and houses.
Ert channel reported that a 45-year-old-man died from a cardiac arrest while trying to flee fires in suburban Athens.
According to the police, the man was found unconscious in the yard of a house in Rodopoli and taken to hospital where he died.
"Today is the hardest that the Fire Brigade has faced in this year's firefighting season," fire department spokesperson Vasilis Vathrakogiannis said on Sunday afternoon, during an emergency press briefing.
"The situation is very difficult, as strong winds continue to blow, they have not subsided and the outbreaks are many," the mayor of Lavreotiki, Dimitris Loukas, told Athens News Agency Sunday afternoon.
However he said a nearby military air base was not currently in danger from the flames.
Fire brigade spokesman noted that wind speeds had exceeded 60 km per hour in Keratea, while in Stamata, the blaze was fanned by strong northerly winds exceeding 70 km an hour.
Island fires
A fire also broke out Sunday in an industrial zone in Ritsona, near the island of Evia.
Black smoke filled the sky above Ritsona after the fire started in a recycling factory, burning various flammable materials that were in the grounds around it, including tyres and mattresses.
Firefighters are fighting to prevent the flames from spreading beyond the recycling plant to other factories in the area.
The fire also approached a refugee center, but the Athens News Agency reported that this was not believed to be in danger.
Separately, a large wildfire broke out on Serifos island on Saturday afternoon, but was also brought under control by firefighters early Sunday.
"All of southwestern Serifos has burned. We are talking about an area where the fire stopped at the sea," Serifos mayor Konstantinos Revintis told MEGA TV.
The fire caused damage to houses, cottages, warehouses and chapels, according to the mayor.
The Fire Danger Forecast Map issued for Sunday by the Civil Protection Ministry predicted a very high category 4 risk of fire for Attica, the Peloponnese, Crete, the North and South Aegean Regions, and central Greece.
A wildfire ignited Saturday afternoon in the area of Mount Parnitha-- known as "the lungs of Athens" -- was controlled Saturday evening with the help of reinforcements from other regions as well as volunteer firefighters.
More than forty wildfires erupted across Saturday in Greece with wind speeds exceeding 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour, according to fire brigade sources.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called on Greeks to brace for a difficult wildfire season in his weekly Facebook post on Sunday.
"The difficult times are still ahead of us. Our effort is continuous. In this effort, our allies are new tools that build a new culture of prevention and responsibility," he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Monday that protectionism “leads nowhere” and that a trade war would have “no winners,” state media said, as he was due to kick off a tour of Southeast Asia with a visit to Vietnam.

Xi’s trip to southeast Asia is likely to cast China as a trustful partner, contrasting itself with Washington, which launched a global trade war.

The Chinese President’s first overseas trip of the year will see him visit Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia where he will meet his three Southeast Asian counterparts, the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Writing in an article published Monday in Vietnam's major Nhan Dan newspaper, Xi urged the two countries to “resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and open and cooperative international environment,” Beijing's Xinhua News Agency said.

He also reiterated Beijing's line that a “trade war and tariff war will produce no winner, and protectionism will lead nowhere,” the agency added.

Xi’s visit comes at a time when the Asian giant is trying to present itself as a stable alternative to the US, which announced sweeping tariffs this month that sent global markets into a tailspin.

Xi will be in Vietnam on Monday and Tuesday, his first trip there since December 2023.

The two countries have close economic ties, but Hanoi is concerned about Beijing’s increasing assertiveness in the contested South China Sea.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea as its own, but this is disputed by the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brunei.

The Chinese leader in his Monday article insisted Beijing and Hanoi could resolve those disputes through dialogue.

“We should properly manage differences and safeguard peace and stability in our region,” Xi wrote, according to Xinhua.

“With vision, we are fully capable of properly settling maritime issues through consultation and negotiation,” he said.

Greece Fights Dozens of Wildfires in 'Most Difficult Day of Year'