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By Louis Goss

Updated: 21:03 EDT, 24 August 2023

The burned bodies of 18 suspected migrants were today found in a remote rural area in northern Greece where wildfires have been burning for days.

A series of ferocious wildfires are continuing to wreak havoc and incinerate homes across the nation and have triggered mass evacuations from tourist hotspots.  

Firefighters are desperately trying to douse the flames with water but the blaze is raging though the Evros region in northeastern Greece and close to the capital of Athens.

The wildfires, which were sparked by a dangerous mix of 41C heat and gale-force winds four days ago, have killed 20 people and destroyed dozens of homes across the country.

Authorities said they believe they have found the burned bodies of 18 migrants near a shack in the Avanta area north of the city of Alexandroupoli. 

‘Given that there have been no reports of disappearances or missing residents from the surrounding areas, the possibility that these are people who entered the country illegally is being investigated,’ fire department spokesman Yiannis Artopios. 

Officials believe the suspected migrants entered the region via Turkey, a popular route for those travelling to Greece illegally. 

‘Searches throughout the entire area where the fire broke out are ongoing,’ Artopios added. 

The wildfires are continuing to burn unchecked in the northeast of the country near the port city of Alexandroupolis, on the islands of Evia and Kynthos, as well as the region of Boeotia north of Athens.

‘There are nine active fronts… it’s a similar situation to July,’ a fire department spokeswoman said, referring to a wave of wildfires that left five dead last month. 

The latest deaths of 18 suspected migrants pushed the overall toll from this week’s fires to 20, after another suspected migrant was found dead in the area Monday. 

An elderly shepherd had also been found dead north of Athens on Monday. 

In Alexandroupolis, where flames have come perilously close to the University hospital, 65 patients were evacuated in the early hours of this morning onto a ferry in the city’s port as a precaution. 

Another 14 people were evacuated by a coast guard vessel from a beach near the village of Makri. 

Several communities in the broader Evros region, near the border with Turkey, have been evacuated as authorities warned the risk of new fires remained high in the coming days. 

Harrowing images show the extent of the damage caused by the wildfires, with the charred remains of homes and cars seen in the Evros region. 

‘Under extreme weather conditions, mainly due to gale-force winds, a huge effort has been made to manage fire fronts that broke out simultaneously in many parts of the country,’ fire brigade spokesperson Ioannis Artopios said late on Monday.

‘The hours we are going through are extremely critical.’

Over 60 fires had erupted in the last 24 hours, and six countries were sending help via the European Union’s civil protection mechanism, the fire department said.

Some 120 firefighters from Cyprus, Romania, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany and Serbia will pitch in, fire department spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis told state TV ERT.

Meanwhile, the European Union announced it was deploying two Cyprus-based firefighting aircraft and a Romanian firefighting team via the bloc’s civil protection mechanism.

A new fire broke out Tuesday at a landfill in the industrial zone of Aspropyrgos near Athens, covering the area in a noxious black cloud.

Officials shut down the nearest section of the Athens ring road, and advised residents to stay indoors.

Another fire broke out in the foothills of Mount Parnitha near the capitals, prompting evacuations.

On the island of Evia, near the capital, officials late Monday evacuated the industrial town of Nea Artaki, where the fire has damaged poultry and pork farms.

The burned body of a man believed to be a migrant was found in a rural area in Lefkimi, near Alexandroupolis, on Monday, a local police official said. 

Evros is a popular border crossing for hundreds of migrants from the Middle East and Asia who use the river by the same name separating Greece from Turkey to cross into the European Union. 

An elderly shepherd had also been found dead in the Boeotia region earlier on Monday.

The flames were also threatening the national park of Dadia, which is one of the most important protected areas in Europe. It offers an ideal habitat for rare birds and is home to the only breeding population of black vultures in the Balkans.

The very hot and dry conditions which increase the fire risk will persist until Friday, according to meteorologists.

Summer wildfires in Greece are common but have been made worse in recent years by unusually hot, dry and windy conditions that scientists have linked to climate change.

More than 20,000 foreign tourists had to be evacuated from the holiday island of Rhodes in July as wildfires burned for a week, destroying hotels and resorts.

The fire had started on July 18 and was fanned by strong winds ravaged almost 17,770 hectares (more than 43,000 acres) in 10 days in the south of Rhodes.

Firefighters in Spain also battled on Tuesday to stabilise a huge wildfire that has devastated forests on the popular tourist destination of Tenerife for six days. 

More than 12,000 people have been evacuated from their homes and nearly 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of pine forest and scrubland have been burned. Large parts of Spain were under alert for wildfire risk due to a heatwave that sent temperatures spiking over 38C in many areas. 

Meanwhile, in Greece’s northern seaside city of Kavala, two firefighters were injured on Monday while trying to contain a blaze threatening homes in the village of Dialekto, the fire brigade said. 

Wildfires have ravaged countries across southern Europe this summer, forcing thousands to be evacuated and thousands more to cancel their holidays. 

Last week, ferocious wildfires ripped through 300 hectares of land in a nature park surrounding the Mount Teide volcano on the Spanish island of Tenerife.

Another fire last week ravaged ravaged homes and holiday campsites in a British tourist hotspot in France, forcing the evacuation of 3,000 people. 

The blazing wildfires ripped through 500 hectares of land and saw thousands of terrified tourists flee for their lives from their holiday homes and campsites in the popular holiday region of Pyrenees-Orientales, southern France.

Britons told how panicked families who had quickly packed their belongings and fled campsites in the commune of Saint-Andre in their cars became trapped in traffic jams after they realised they were in fact heading towards the quickly expanding flames of the wildfire. 

Zak Dhabalia, 55, a retired British hedge fund manager who lives in the nearby village of Sorede and saw the flames come perilously close to his home, said it was an ‘extraordinary and terrifying experience for us all’.

Dhabalia, who lives with his French wife Sylvie Dhabalia, told MailOnline it was ‘terrifying’ to see how quickly the wildfire spread across the vineyards towards the campsites which were gutted by the flames, adding that he could hear gas canisters exploding at the site.

Elsewhere in Europe, Greece, Italy, Algeria and Tunisia combined lost more than 1,350 square kilometers (520 square miles) to blazes that affected 120,000 people in late July, according to European Union estimates.

Two weeks ago, a series of wildfires ripped through Portugal and neighbouring Spain as temperatures soared to over 44C, forcing the evacuation of thousands of holidaymakers from villages and campsites.

Climate scientists say heat waves are more intense, more frequent and longer because of climate change — and coupled with droughts have made wildfires harder to fight.

They say climate change will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

‘Climate change kills,’ Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said last month during a visit to the Extremadura region, the site of three major blazes. ‘It kills people, it kills our ecosystems and biodiversity.’ 

Wildfires raging through Europe this summer have so far burned the second-largest area on record, even though the region is only halfway through its typical fire season, according to data from the European Union’s Joint Research Centre. 

Southern European countries such as Portugal and Greece experience fires most summers, but hotter temperatures are pushing severe wildfire risk north, with Germany, Slovenia and the Czech Republic among those hit this season. 

The number of neighbourhoods hit by Covid outbreaks in England has doubled in a fortnight, MailOnline can reveal amid fears the ‘real deal’ variant may be sweeping the country.

Nearly 600 districts reported clusters in the week to August 12, up from just 270 two weeks earlier.

Hospital admissions are also rising sharply, sparking concerns that the UK is on the brink of another wave just as the country heads into the autumn when the NHS gets busier.

Experts have speculated bad weather over the past few weeks and even the ‘Barbenheimer effect’ – referring to the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer – might have also contributed to the rise in infections, as well as waning immunity from jab roll-outs.

But the uptick coincides with the arrival of Eris, a variant which already makes up one in four new cases. 

Another heavily-mutated strain dubbed the ‘real deal’, which has spooked experts and already prompted calls for the return of face masks, was today confirmed to be in Britain. Genetic tests revealed an unidentified patient in a London hospital had BA.X, otherwise known as BA.2.86. 

Alarm bells were raised because they are thought to have caught the strain within the UK. No links were found to four other cases logged worldwide, in the US, Denmark and Israel.

Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist from the University of Reading, told MailOnline: ‘We can be pretty sure that it’s circulating in the population more widely. 

‘What we don’t know is by how much or in whom and we don’t know how much of a problem it’s going to cause as we move towards autumn and winter.’

Health chiefs don’t know when BA.X reached Britain. It could have silently spreading for weeks. 

UK Health Security Agency statistics show that 589 out of 6,500 neighbourhoods in England had detected at least three Covid cases in the week to August 12.

For comparison, just 58 areas had reached this threshold — given to protect the anonymity of patients sickened in tiny clusters — at the start of July. 

MailOnline analysis shows the figure has gradually increased week-on-week since then, hitting 270 on July 29 and 448 on August 5.

It means the number of regions in England hit by Covid has more than doubled in a fortnight and surged 10-fold in five weeks.

The figures only reflect the tip of the iceberg, however. 

Barely any Covid cases are logged nowadays because of the decision to bin the multi-billion pound mass-testing scheme in April 2022, in acknowledgement that the darkest days of the UK’s virus crisis were over. Infection rates are, therefore, not neccessarily an accurate reflection of the current picture.

However, testing levels have remained stable over the past few months. 

Around 5,000 lateral flow test results and 2,700 PCR readings have been uploaded per day in the last week.

Positive test results are reported by the minority of the public still eligible for a free Covid test or have taken a PCR swab — such as health and social care workers, anyone with underlying health conditions.

The UKHSA data also includes results from labs that process privately-purchased PCR tests, which share findings with the Government. 

The toll of affected neighbourhoods is still a fraction of levels seen at the height of the pandemic. 

In early 2021, when the nation had battled through its first winter with Covid circulating, more than 5,300 local authorities reported cases and at much higher levels.

In the latest week, rates were highest in Horsham, West Sussex, where 106 infections were confirmed per 100,000 people.

Virus levels were also high in Weston Town, North Somerset (102), Porthleven, Breage and Praa Sands in Cornwall (102) and East Saltdean and Telscombe Cliffs in Lewes (101).

Meanwhile, Covid-positive admissions hit 3 per 100,000 people in England in the week to August 13, up from 1.2 just four weeks earlier.

Virologists are unsettled by BA.X because of the catalogue of mutations it carries on its spike protein, the piece of the coronavirus that vaccines were designed to target. 

Experts, however, have warned it’s far too early to panic. No evidence shows BA.X is any more of a threat than the dozens of strains that have come before it.

Immunity levels built-up through vaccine roll-outs and previous waves remain high and, over time, the virus has evolved to become less deadly and resemble something closer to that of the flu.

Other variants flagged as troublesome have just fizzled out naturally.

Ministers have vowed they will never deploy curbs wielded during the darkest days of the crisis in 2020 and 2021 unless a doomsday variant emerges which sends the world back to square one.

Alarm bells over the strain were first rung earlier this week, after a prominent online virus-tracker spotted cases initially crop up in Denmark. The discovery came just a day after the same lineage was detected in Israel. 

Yesterday, variant trackers online also suggested a fourth case had been spotted in Michigan.

The strain is classed as a ‘currently circulating variant under monitoring’ by the World Health Organization.

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist and lead for the Covid response at the WHO, cautioned there is very limited information available on the strain.

But she said it needs monitoring due to its large number of mutations.

Surveillance and sequencing is ‘critical’ to detect new variants and track known ones, she added. 

Dr Meera Chand, deputy director of the UKHSA told MailOnline: ‘We are aware that BA.2.86 has been detected in the UK.

‘UKHSA is assessing the situation and will provide further information in due course.’

Meanwhile, Professor Francois Balloux, a vocal Covid commentator throughout the pandemic, from University College London, labelled BA.2.86 ‘the most striking strain the world has witnessed since the emergence of Omicron’.

He said: ‘Even in the worst case scenario where BA.2.86 caused a major new wave of cases, we are not expecting to witness comparable levels of severe disease and death than we did earlier in the pandemic when the Alpha, Delta or Omicron variants spread.

‘Most people on earth have now been vaccinated and/or infected by the virus.

‘Even if people get reinfected by BA.2.86, immune memory will still allow their immune system to kick in and control the infection far more effectively.’

Professor Balloux added, however: ‘A large wave of infection by BA.2.86, or any future comparable variant, would be an unwelcome event.’