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According to Didier Reynders, Foreign Affairs has no news of 6 Belgians following the fires ravaging Greece.
The toll of fires around Athens has increased to 60 dead Tuesday, said AFP Myron Tsagarakis, councilor of Rafina, chief town of the seaside area ravaged by fires.
"We counted 60 deaths," he said, confirming information relayed by local media, while the government still gave the figure of 50 confirmed dead.
Belgian foreign affairs remained Tuesday without news of a Belgian tourist belonging to a group of 31 holidaymakers. Moreover, among the Belgian residents in Greece, the Foreign Affairs were still without news Tuesday of five people belonging to two families on the spot. Attempts to contact continued.
Following the violent fires near Athens, Greece, the Belgian Foreign Minister communicated via Twitter that 6 of our compatriots had still not given any news.
TUI lost track of two holidaymakers …
The tour operator TUI also communicated. Many Belgian holidaymakers are in the vicinity of the fire zones. " In the vicinity of the Greek capital of Athens, which is beset by two big forest fires, 32 holidaymakers from the tour operator TUI Belgium were staying at the Ramada Attika hotel. between them were evacuated from the area by boat to the port of Piraeus.The representative of TUI on the spot immediately took care of them and offered them to stay in another hotel.Two travelers joined this same hotel of their own As for the other 2 holidaymakers, we are closely monitoring the situation in collaboration with the Belgian and local authorities. "
" At present, our teams provide badistance to travelers and do their utmost to best meet their needs. We are also looking with them for the possibilities for the rest of their stay, and a number of travelers have asked to come in earlier, and TUI is doing the necessary to bring them back to Belgium today. "
" D In the other resorts around Athens, there is no problem at present. The holidays are normally held there for the people on the spot and for those who have to leave soon. "
" Since the beginning of the fires, TUI has been monitoring the situation permanently with its teams present on site, with the international teams of the group TUI, hoteliers, local authorities and the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "
26 people found dead in the courtyard of a villa
The toll of violent fires suddenly rose Tuesday to 50 dead after the discovery of body of 26 people in the courtyard of a villa in Mati, eastern Attica.
According to a provisional badessment, at least 172 other people were injured, 11 of them seriously. an AFP photographer on the spot, the 26 victims discovered on Tuesday morning seem not to have managed to reach the nearby sea to take shelter.
The fire calmed down in this zone, indicated the pompi to AFP, but a front still progressed in Kineta, about fifty km west of the capital.
Around the capital, most of the victims were trapped in the vicinity of Mati, a locality beach about 40 km east of Athens, whose houses are often surrounded by tall pines. They died "at home or in their cars," Greek government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos said.
At least four people were also found dead at sea where they tried to find refuge when the flames have pushed residents panicked on the beaches.
Interior Minister Panos Skourletis told public TV ERT that the authorities "are still looking for any more missing". "Dante's Hell", headlined on Tuesday the newspaper Ta Nea (centrist opposition), "Attica in Ashes", summed up the left-liberal daily Ethnos
Suspicious activity
Nine coastal patrol boats, two military buildings and dozens of private boats badisted by army helicopters were mobilized all night to evacuate to the port of Rafina, near Mati, residents and tourists fled flames on the beaches and at sea.
The first survivors were transferred to hotels and military camps, while many concerned relatives flocked to Rafina.
Greece activated the European Civil Protection Mechanism for help from its partners. In addition to Spain and Cyprus, Israel has offered reinforcements, according to Skourletis
The spokesman also mentioned that there had been "15 simultaneous fires on three different fronts in Attica" , which led Greece to ask drones in the United States "to observe and detect any suspicious activity."
Given the situation, the presidency of the Republic canceled the annual reception scheduled for Tuesday to commemorate the recovery Democracy in Greece in July 1974.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, for his part, hastily returned from a trip to Bosnia to follow the operations. According to him, "more than 600 firefighters" were on all three fronts of the fires, fanned by winds up to more than 100 km / h.
The fires took place as a heat wave fell on the country, with temperatures climbing up to 40 degrees Celsius. According to weather services, conditions are expected to remain difficult on Tuesday, although temperatures in Attica are expected to drop, with showers.
Northern Europe suffocates
Forest and maquis fires are recurrent in Greece l 'summer. The last of the most devastating fires in the Peloponnese and on the island of Evia in 2007 killed 77 people, ravaging 250,000 hectares of forests, maquis and crops.
Northern Europe, from Oslo to Riga, has also been crushed for several weeks by the heat and drought that engulf forests and peat bogs, burn pastures, empty groundwater and even lower the level of large lakes.
Sweden, which knows the month of July the most hot for at least two centuries and a half, had to appeal to European solidarity to fight against fire.
No less than 25,000 hectares have already gone up in smoke or continue to burn, twice the size of the city from Paris.
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