Hail storm killed seven people in Greece

"In five minutes we have gone through hell," AFP Haris Lazaridis, owner of the tavern Nea Plagia, told AFP after the death of a 54-year-old Romanian woman. of his 8 year old son.

Restaurants and bars in the area were crowded at the beginning of the summer season, when suddenly there was a moment of "panic".

"People started screaming and ran to hide in the premises," Lazaridis explained, stating that there were a hundred people when the wooden roof collapsed because of the wind and has killed the woman. His son was dragged by the wind and fell on the glbad door.

slender greece

On Thursday morning, the landscape was bleak in this tourist region of the north of the country, where the state of emergency was declared.

You can see cars overturned, trees felled and mudslides, said an AFP journalist. Among the wounded, there are five children.

"It's an unprecedented phenomenon", with "very strong winds" and "violent hail storms," ​​said AFP Charalambos Steriadis, head of Civil Protection in northern Greece .

The tornado lasted for about 20 minutes, according to witnesses interviewed by Greek public television ERT. Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said the winds reached 100 km / h.

"It's a miracle that there are no more deaths," said Kyriakos Athanasiadis, a 39-year-old holidaymaker. "Almost all the seaside restaurants were full and there were a lot of great items stolen there, it was great," he added.

In the coastal town of Kbadandra, about 70 km from Thessaloniki, the fall of a tree killed a Russian and his two-year-old son in a hotel, a police source said.

And in Sozopoli, another coastal town full of tourists, a couple in their seventies in the Czech Republic died when their caravan on a beach was dragged by violent gusts of wind. His 48-year-old son and 19-year-old grandson were also injured.

And it's that the wind has raised its caravan "as if it was a matchbox," says Yannis Karabourniotis, owner of a tavern at fish located a few meters away.

"What happened is indescribable, all this damage occurred in five minutes," he told AFP. "At home there were more than 50 pines, most of them cut or cut in half, that's amazing," he added.

slender greece

"I want to express my grief on behalf of all, we deplore the loss of these souls," said Citizen Protection Minister Michalis Chrisochoidis, who oversees operations.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, elected in Sunday's parliamentary elections, on Thursday canceled his program to deal with the disaster, his office said.

At least 140 firefighters participated in the rescue operations, said Vbadilis Varthakoyannis, head of the service.

The entire area was deprived of electricity due to storms and the army was striving to restore power.

The storm has occurred in the north of the country, while in the rest of Greece, temperatures have reached up to 37 ° C over the last two days.

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