Water-dropping aircraft and firefighters on the ground battled to contain at least five wildfires across Greece amid high late-summer temperatures Friday.
Civil protection authorities warned that most of the country – including Greater Athens, the Aegean Sea islands, Crete and most of the Peloponnese – would face a category-3 wildfire risk Saturday, on a 5-notch scale.
A heatwave is forecast to persist through the middle of next week, with temperatures hitting a maximum 42 degrees Celsius.
On Friday afternoon, five water-bombing aircraft were mobilised to assist 48 firefighters wit 15 fire engines trying to tame a wildfire burning through forest and farmland near the village of Messochori in the southwestern Peloponnese.
At the other end of the country, near the village of Katafyto in the northern Drama region, four aircraft flew sorties to support ground forces battling a forest fire, and two more blazes were raging through forest and farmland near the villages of Neromana and Genesi in central Greece.
