Greek firefighters recovered the bodies of 18 people on Tuesday they believed to be migrants in the Evros region of northern Greece, near the city of Alexandroupolis, where a large wildfire was burning for a fourth day.
Charred remains were found near a shack on the border of the Dadia Forest, a spokesman for Greece’s fire service, Yiannis Artopios, said in a televised briefing. No missing people were reported in the area, so authorities said they were examining the possibility that the dead “entered the country illegally,” Mr. Artopios said.
No further details were available about the dead. The Evros region, where the bodies were found, borders Turkey and is a crossing point for thousands of migrants seeking to enter Europe via Greece.
Greek firefighters were battling several fires across the country on Tuesday, but their efforts were hampered by strong winds and dry conditions after a summer of back-to-back heat waves. In addition to the large fire near Alexandroupolis, firefighters are battling another fire in the northern Rodopi region, as well as fires in Aspropyrgos and Fyli, west of Athens. Three villages near Fyli were evacuated in the afternoon as well as a monastery. And fire burns in the islands of Kythnos and Evia.
And in neighboring Turkey, at least six villages were evacuated in the west, after forest fires broke out in Canakkale province, an Aegean city along the Dardanelles Strait, Turkish authorities said.
Vessel traffic has been temporarily suspended on the waterway from south to north, the transport ministry said, according to media reports.
The fires in Evros and west of Athens were the most dangerous, Mr. Artopios told Greek state television, adding that 65 fires had broken out in just one day: “New fields continue to broke out across the country.”
A convoy of military vehicles was sent to northern Greece on Tuesday to help fight fires there.
The European Union, which maintains a standing firefighting force drawn together from member countries, sent more resources to Greece on Tuesday. The assistance included 58 firefighters, a Black Hawk helicopter, nine water tanks and five planes, including two water-dropping aircraft from Sweden.
A fire service spokesman said authorities had sent several evacuation alerts since Monday to cellphones registered to both Greek and foreign networks in the Evros region. He added that the Greek police mobilized a team of specialists to identify the victims.
As the fire spread in the early afternoon, authorities in Alexandroupolis called for the evacuation of residents of 10 villages. It followed the evacuation of dozens of hospital patients, some of whom were put on a ferry in the early hours of the morning, while others were taken by ambulance. Most were relocated to the northern city of Kavala.
Video from the early hours of Tuesday showed the sky glowing red behind the university hospital of Alexandroupolis after the fire reached its grounds.
On the ferry, patients with IV drips lie on mattresses while nurses walk around oxygen tanks and other equipment, the video shows. Eleven newborns from the same hospital were among those transferred.
Amid the chaos of the fires, police in Alexandroupolis said on Tuesday night that they had arrested the owner of a truck that locked 13 migrants in the vehicle’s trailer and posted a video of an episode on social media earlier today that showed him cursing and taunting migrants, both Syrian and Pakistani nationals.
The man, identified only as a “foreign national,” was arrested along with two Greeks believed to have “participated in the incident,” police said. In the video, which went viral on Greek social media, a man can be seen opening the door of a truck trailer to reveal the terror on the faces of a group of seemingly unharmed migrants.
“They’re going to burn us, they’re going to burn us,” the man can be heard saying. “Twenty-five pieces,” he added, thinking of a slur.
It is not clear what the “pieces” refer to, although another video posted on social media on Tuesday, featuring a man with a similar voice, shows makeshift incendiary devices in the woods , with comments suggesting that migrants planted them there. “Look what they did,” he can be heard saying. “They will burn us.”
The man, identified by police only as a “foreign national,” was arrested, along with two Greeks believed to have “participated in the incident,” police said.
Earlier in the summer, wildfires hit the tourist destinations of Corfu, Evia and Rhodes. The fire in Rhodes led to a massive evacuation, and thousands of tourists rushed to leave.
On Monday, authorities linked two more deaths to the fires after the charred body of a shepherd was found in the central region of Viotia and the remains of a man believed to be a migrant were discovered in Lefkimmi, near Alexandroupolis.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed reporting from Brussels, and Safak Timur from Istanbul.