RHODES, Greece: Authorities evacuated nearly 2,500 people from the Greek island of Corfu on Monday as the heat-battered nation was "at war" with several wildfires.
Tens of thousands of people have already fled blazes on the island of Rhodes, with many frightened tourists scrambling to get home on evacuation flights.
About 2,400 visitors and locals were evacuated from the Ionian tourist island of Corfu from Sunday into Monday, a fire service spokesman said, adding that the departures were a precaution.
"We are at war and are exclusively geared towards the fire front," Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament, warning that the nation faced "another three difficult days ahead" before high temperatures are forecast to ease.
Greece has been sweltering under a lengthy spell of extreme heat that has exacerbated wildfire risk and left visitors stranded in peak tourist season.
Kelly Squirrel, a transport administrator from the United Kingdom, said police had ordered people from her hotel on Rhodes to evacuate.
"We had to keep walking," she said at the international airport. "So we walked for about six hours in the heat."
Rhodes, which counted 2.5 million visitor arrivals in 2022, is one of Greece's leading holiday destinations.
Greek television broadcast images of long lines of people, some in beachwear, lugging suitcases along the island's roads on Saturday, when the evacuations were ordered.
Some 30,000 people fled the flames on Rhodes at the weekend, the country's largest-ever wildfire evacuation.
Police said 16,000 people had been transported on land and evacuated 3,000 by sea. Others had to flee by road or used their own transport after being told to leave the area.
"We are exhausted and traumatised," said Daniel-Cladin Schmidt, a 42-year-old German tourist waiting to be evacuated with his wife and nine-year-old son.
"There were thousands of people, the buses couldn't pass, we had to walk for more than two hours," he said at Rhodes airport.
"We couldn't breathe, we just covered our faces and moved forward."
Holiday-makers and some locals spent the night in gyms, schools and hotel conference centres on the island.
In the departures hall of the international airport, AFP saw groups of tourists sleeping on the floor, surrounded by luggage. — AFP
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