Sawt Falasteen - Fire toll mounts in Greece as blazes spread

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece had faced "extreme weather conditions and winds" that often reached 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour.

"When the winds blow with such force, even the dozens of aircraft we have at our disposal cannot operate safely," he wrote on Facebook.

"There are moments when nature and the intensity of weather phenomena surpass any human planning and any operational capability."

Nearly 500 firefighters were battling blazes around the popular coastal village of Porto Germeno, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) northwest of Athens, the fire department said.

They were attempting to keep the fire from approaching the western outskirts of Athens after it scaled a mountain overnight.

Some 100 firefighters were fighting another blaze in Aigialia in the northern Peloponnese.

A new fire broke out late Saturday on the Ionian Sea island of Cephalonia.

The National Observatory's climate tracker meteo.gr said early estimates indicated that over 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) had been burned in separate fires on the Gulf of Corinth which also swept Porto Germeno.

Porto Germeno and other villages were evacuated when the fire broke out on Friday but local authorities say scores of homes were damaged or destroyed.

"We could not believe what we were seeing, the fire spread extremely rapidly," said Nikos Georgopoulos from the laboratory of forest management at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

"Porto Germeno had a small fire three years ago. Now the flames have swept over it again," he told state TV ERT.

- 'Megafire' -

Earlier this week, fires on the islands of Crete and Paros affected another 6,000 hectares according to meteo.

But Theodore Giannaros, a wildfire meteorologist and senior researcher at the National Observatory, said the fires around Porto Germeno appear to have affected an area of over 10,000 hectares -- almost double the original estimate.

"Unfortunately, it is highly likely (if not almost certain) that this particular wildfire will be classified as a megafire," Giannaros wrote on Facebook.

Firefighters have faced dozens of fires daily and Greece's Civil Protection Minister Evangelos Tournas on Saturday said the fire department had been "pushed to its limits".

Gale-force winds created "extremely difficult conditions resulting in many cases where aircraft either cannot draw water or cannot carry out drops due to extreme turbulence", Tournas said.

Though the winds eased late on Saturday, the greater Athens area and nearby Voiotia and the island of Evia were under near maximum fire risk on Sunday, the civil protection ministry said.

Hit hard by the climate crisis like the rest of the Mediterranean region, Greece is plagued by wildfires every summer due to high temperatures, frequent heat waves and drought.

B.Mahmoud--SF-PST