Skyros wildfire: 100 firefighters fight Greek island blaze

About 100 firefighters and nearly a dozen aircraft and helicopters were battling a forest fire on the Greek Aegean island of Skyros on Sunday, as the blaze burned for a second day after forcing the evacuation of two small communities.

Skyros mayor Kyriakos Antonopoulos told state TV ERT that he believed the fire would be fully extinguished within the day. He said no inhabited areas were under threat on Sunday.

The fire broke out on Saturday on Skyros, a mountainous island northeast of Athens with about 3,000 residents. Reinforcements were sent from neighbouring areas.

Kostas Tsigas, president of the association of fire service officers, told ERT that fire crews with machinery and excavators were trying to clear a path in difficult terrain. Water bombers were able to operate after strong winds blowing through the night eased at daybreak.

Smoke from the central and northern part of the island was visible over Athens on Saturday evening and was still visible at midday Sunday as AFP reporters landed at the local airport.

The fire department said 34 fires had broken out around Greece over the previous 24 hours. Greece has faced several major wildfires since late July, fuelled by unusually strong winds.

Five firefighters have died so far, including a Danish pilot killed in a mid-air collision between two Bell helicopters while fighting a blaze near Athens earlier this month. Last week, about 500 tourists were evacuated from beaches on the Halkidiki peninsula in northern Greece as a forest fire threatened two popular resorts.

About 20,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land have burned this year in major fires near Athens and on the islands of Crete and Paros. Greece was on maximum wildfire alert during the weekend, but the civil protection ministry said that for the first time in 10 days no area was above level 3 on the national fire risk scale, which runs to 5.

Greece is hit by wildfires every year. Experts say the risk is growing because human-fuelled climate change has made droughts and other extreme weather events more severe.