A fuming traveller claims £1,000 ($1,200) worth of items went missing after an airline ‘lost’ her luggage for two months – despite her AirTag tracker revealing that it was at the airport.

Sarah Waite, 25, travelled from Los Angeles to Athens, with a layover in Paris.

But when she landed in the Greek capital, she discovered her suitcase had not made it on to the plane and would arrive later.

A week later, Sarah, who is originally from Los Angeles, received a notification from her AirTag, a tracking device by Apple, saying her bag had left Paris and was finally in Athens.

When she went to pick it up, she claims Air France staff told her they didn’t have it despite the AirTag showing its location at the airport.

The registered nurse spent two months without her luggage after the flight on May 14.

And when she was finally able to retrieve it, Sarah claims her suitcase had been damaged and £1,000 ($1,200) worth of items were missing, including shoes and makeup.

Sarah described the whole experience as ‘horrible and traumatising’.

It was the trip of a lifetime for Sarah, who travelled to Athens to pursue her dream of learning modern and ancient Greek literature.

So her dream trip wasn’t off to a good start when she landed in Athens with no luggage. 

She said: ‘I went to claim my luggage and almost all of the passengers were informed that it was arriving later.

‘We all had to make a claim at the Air France desk at 2am local time.

‘There were probably about 60 people that stayed to file the claim, me being one of them.’

In the hope of speeding things up, Sarah filed a claim online while waiting in the physical queue.

At 5am in the morning, three hours after landing, she finally left Athens International Airport – without her luggage.

Sarah had an AirTag inside her suitcase so she could see that the item was in Paris, where she’d had her layover.

She said: ‘Luckily I had an AirTag inside my luggage so I could see that Air France was not lying and it really was still in the Paris airport.’

Sarah kept in touch with airline staff over the next few days but found the communication difficult.

She said ‘I kept in contact with Air France about my claim and they were not communicative at all, leaving me on hold for long periods, not connecting me with someone who spoke English.’

A week later, on May 20, Sarah’s AirTag sent her a notification revealing that her luggage had left Paris Charles de Gaulle and was finally in Athens.

She decided to make her way to the airport but when she arrived, she was unable to reclaim her belongings.

Sarah said: ‘I went to the help desk and then finally to the lost and found with lots of effort and back-and-forth argumentation about my claim number.

‘It was not there and there was nothing I could do, even though my AirTag said it was there.’

As she found herself without her suitcase, Sarah, who suffers from Graves’ disease, had to buy a number of items including her thyroid medications.

The condition is an autoimmune disorder that can cause hyperthyroidism or overactive thyroid.

She said: ‘I lost hope but I continued my communication with the airline every day, sending them receipts of the items I had to purchase.’

Two months later, on July 20, Sarah was still able to track her AirTag, so she made a final attempt and travelled to the airport again.

When she arrived, Sarah went to the airline desk and confronted the staff. 

She said ‘The people helping me were very rude, yelling at me when I expressed frustration, telling me there is nothing they can do even though they work at the airport and can take me to the AirTag location.

‘They even threatened to call the police on me because I started video recording the situation.’

A video shows the interaction between herself and the staff, where an argument breaks out.

According to Sarah, the staff eventually agreed to take her to the lost and found where she was finally able to retrieve her luggage.

When she was reunited with her suitcase, Sarah claimed that it was clear it had been damaged and items lost.

She explained: ‘I got my bag, but again with extreme frustration.

‘I went to the help desk and got permission to access the lost and found.

‘I went to the lost and found and then the other lost and found but my bag was not there.

‘I finally broke down and cried in front of the entire staff and that is when someone said, “Oh we called you, okay stay here.”‘

She added: ‘It took extreme emotional expression to get the people to understand who I was and that I was contacted, even though I was telling everyone who helped me out that my name is Sarah Waite and I was called because my bags were found.

‘A young man took me to the customs area where my AirTag was tagged and I got my bag.

‘My luggage was completely ripped open, shoes were gone, makeup gone, bags were missing and the original lock on the zippers is not on it.

‘I am devastated still, but at least my medication, which is in a liquid form, if you have Graves’ disease then you know, is viable.’

Sarah documented her lost-luggage frustrations on TikTok, revealing on one clip that she received $600 (£485) in compensation.

Air France has yet to respond to requests for comment. 

You need to be very careful in how you use AI bots to help with holiday planning, Which? reveals.

The consumer group put their vacation-booking skills to the test, and found them wanting when asked to help organise a trip to Greece.

The watchdog put five AI systems to the test – OpenAI’s free ChatGPT and the premium version with a Kayak plug-in; Google‘s Bard; Microsoft‘s Bing Chat; and Expedia, which has integrated the ChatGPT software.

Which? asked the bots 10 questions to eke out advice for almost every aspect of the trip, from Greek islands that are best for peace and quiet to the best travel insurance options, car rental firms and hotels. 

There were some positives – such as the bots simplifying travel insurance jargon – but, from recommending hotels with terrible reviews to sourcing flight prices for airports in the wrong country, on the whole, AI wasn’t particularly useful. Here’s what the investigation uncovered…

THE GOOD

Which? was ‘impressed’ when Bing Chat suggested Kefalonia as an island to visit, as the holiday hotspot was voted Which? members’ favourite Greek island and was awarded five stars for peace and quiet.

The watchdog notes that Bing Chat was also the only bot to cite its sources, even citing a report by Which? in its advice.

In another positive, Which? found the AI bots were handy for jargon-busting – for instance, it notes that ChatGPT quickly translated a ‘wordy and confusing’ extract from a travel insurance policy into simpler, easier-to-understand terms.

THE BAD

One major negative, Which? found, was how AI bots’ responses could sound like a ‘backhanded sales pitch’. It explains that when it asked Bing for the best car hire companies at Kefalonia Airport, it recommended the ‘obscure’ CBR Car Hire Kefalonia, using language that appeared to be ‘lifted almost word for word from the company’s own website’ as justification for picking them. ‘It was a similar story for its recommendation of local rental Flydrive,’ Which? says.

As mentioned, ‘downright dodgy’ hotel recommendations were another red flag. Which? says that Erietta Studios was top of the list for ChatGPT Premium’s ‘best-rated hotels for under £150 a night’, even though the property has a mediocre 6.7 rating on Kayak and 2.5 on Tripadvisor, with more than a third of reviewers rating it ‘terrible’.

On top of that, Bard gave Which? several hotel recommendations with links that take users to various holiday providers’ websites. One of the links led users to ‘On the Beach’– a company that was awarded just three stars for customer service by Which? members, the watchdog notes.

Which? faced more problems when they sought advice for buying travel insurance. Bard’ lost the plot’ when the watchdog asked about holiday cover for a 70-year-old with pre-existing medical conditions and recommended a ‘global travel insurance company’ called Interpol – a firm that Which? couldn’t find any trace of online. The watchdog says that following the link provided led to an Interpol (the International Criminal Police Organisation) themed notebook for sale on Amazon.

The AI bots were similarly wayward when it came to sourcing flights. ChatGPT wrongly told Which? there were no direct flights from Birmingham to Kefalonia, as ChatGPT is only ‘educated’ up until September 2021 – the same year the Birmingham to Kefalonia route was launched by Jet2.com.

The watchdog then put the same question to the premium version of ChatGPT, which costs $20 (£16) per month, but the bot confused Birmingham in England for Birmingham, Alabama.

Financial advice from each of the AI bots varied wildly, Which? found. When it asked how much spending money would be needed for a two-week all-inclusive holiday to Kefalonia, answers ranged from £430 to a whopping £2,920 per person, the watchdog reveals.

Another warning sign flashed when Which? asked if the AI bots could book the trip. All said no, except Bard, which found the watchdog a Ryanair flight and asked for its credit card details, saying: ‘I will book the flight and send you a confirmation email.’ However, Google told the watchdog that Bard was getting ahead of itself and doesn’t have the ability to book flights yet.

Google also told Which? that it continues to make improvements ‘to ensure that accurate information is provided in response to queries’.

Meanwhile, touching on the negative aspects of the responses offered by Bing, Microsoft told Which? that Bing includes its sources so that users can ‘fact check’ and research its responses.

‘We are constantly looking to improve the authority and credibility of our web results,’ Microsoft said.

And OpenAI acknowledged that ChatGPT sometimes gives ‘plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers’ – and admits that fixing this issue is ‘challenging’, Which? reveals.

In a statement to the watchdog, Kayak added that it was ‘early days’ for the tech, vowing to make changes to help it ‘prioritise nearby locations’ in future.

The upshot from Which? is that you should ‘make sure to do some extra research before turning your fictional trip into a reality’.

Which? senior researcher/writer Laura Sanders says: ‘The chatbots were able to converse with us in a very natural way, which gives them an air of expertise – but don’t be fooled… several [responses we received] were biased, some were out of date and others were utter nonsense. Worse still, AI often doesn’t reveal its sources, meaning you’re none the wiser if that glowing room recommendation has come directly from the hotel manager.’

And Rory Boland, Editor of Which? Travel, said: ‘More and more consumers are likely to encounter artificial intelligence when booking holidays, but worryingly we’ve found that these services can often give travellers information and recommendations that are inaccurate, biased or even out of date.

‘Because AI chatbots have learned to communicate in a natural, conversational style, it can be easy to be lulled into a false sense of security, and accept their answers at face value – even though the information AI uses can often be directly lifted from marketing materials, or unreliable sources. Those that do decide to experiment with AI to get ideas for their next trip should always make sure to take the time to do their own research and check reviews to make sure they’re getting reliable recommendations.’

A teenager on her first girls’ trip abroad claims she binned half her wardrobe and is worried for her health after staying in a disgusting Jet2 package hotel that was ‘infested’ with black mould. 

Molly Mcquillan, 18, was horrified to find that her clothes and Nike trainers, which cost £120, were covered in mould less than two weeks into her holiday at the party resort of Malia, on the Greek island of Crete.

Ms Mcquillan, from Rochdale, was holidaying with her twenty-one-year-old friends Paris and Morgan Mcintosh last month before going off to university in Preston, Lancashire.

Their holiday bliss turned to hotel horror as they discovered what they say was black mould in their ‘damp and smelly’ room. 

Photos show the items inside the hotel room caked in a black furry substance, including the kettle, bin, shower curtain, and even the ceiling. The womens’ clothes and shoes are also shown covered in what appears to be mould.

The group said that the ‘infestation’ had caused them to bin more than £200 of belongings, and say that they are concerned that having stayed in the ‘dangerous’ hotel room could affect their health.

They are demanding that Jet2 provide them with a refund for the £550 holiday from hell.

The student claims that she and Morgan Mcintosh have developed a cough since returning home last week.

Ms Mcquillan complained: ‘It’s disgusting. If they put a baby in there or people with health issues, it’s dangerous.’

‘We don’t know if they’ll just wipe the walls and then it’ll grow back again in two weeks,’ she added. ‘We’ve probably lost about £200 of stuff. My Nike Dunks that I had to leave cost about £120 and my friend had to leave six pairs of shoes.’

Jet2 said that they were only made aware of the issue the day before Ms Mcquillan’s departure and they were investigating.

Ms Mcquillan spoke of her disappointment. ‘It’s made me angry,’ she said. ‘My shoes I got as a Christmas present and my other clothes [are ruined] – I’ve left a lot there.’

‘Even the bed was covered in damp and mould was starting to appear on some of the bed sheets.’

‘There was stuff in the wardrobe and on our shoes, bags, and cases on the floor. Everything has mould on it.’

‘When I was there, I ended up getting a bad cough. Since I’ve gone home, at nighttime and in the morning, I feel chesty. I’ve had to go to the doctors, my friend has a bad cough as well.’

Ms Mcquillan said that her friends and her had been aware that the hotel was only rated two stars, but that they expected it be clean. 

‘We expected it not to be the best,’ Ms Mcquillan explained. ‘We were actually pretty happy with the room to begin with but there was a strong odour in the room.’

‘We never paid attention to it, we thought it was just the room, but it was getting stronger and stronger towards the end of the holiday.’

‘Then mould started to appear towards the end of our second week.’

‘We were on the ground floor and couldn’t open the balcony to let air in just in case anyone came in.’

‘Towards the end of the holiday I noticed I had some shoes that were covered in thick mould.’

‘When we came to pack, that’s when we noticed mould was everywhere thick on the walls. It just isn’t acceptable.’

Ms Mcquillan says that she raised the mould issue with the hotel and with Jet2 on September 7. She says they were offered an ‘insulting’ £50 compensation to be split three ways, which they declined. They are now pursuing the complain with Jet2. 

‘We came to pack up and I said ‘look at my top, it’s covered in mould’, and I thought ‘I’m not having it,’ she said. 

‘I rang Jet2 and sent the pictures over, and one of the reps was in the hotel. I asked them to come into our room, the smell was so bad in the room.’

‘Her face dropped as soon as she walked through the door, she said she’d let the manager know.’

‘The next day I went to the rep and asked ‘what’s the outcome of it?’

‘She said she’d spoken to the woman above her and they’re happy to offer £50, which isn’t worth the damage it’s caused to all our stuff so we refused it. It was an insult to us.’

‘I am waiting to hear back from Jet2, they said within two weeks we would hear back. The CEO of Jet2 said he’s investigating it.’

‘I’d like the full money of the holiday back. I understand they might have to knock a bit off because of flights but I think we should get the accommodation refunded.’

Ms Mcquillan is urging any other travellers to think carefully about their hotel choices after the ‘unacceptable’ experience. 

‘It upsets me, this definitely didn’t live up to the ‘trusted’ holiday packages.’

‘Jet2 shouldn’t send guests to places like that. It wasn’t just young ones, there were adults and children there too.’

‘If kids have any illnesses and stay in that room, they’ll end up getting even more ill.’

‘It’s made me more cautious to book with Jet2 again. With something like this they should be looking into it straight away.’

‘The room put a dampener on the trip, it was our first girls’ holiday away. I understand it’s only a two-star hotel but you shouldn’t expect big black mould in the room.’

A Jet2 spokesperson said: ‘As an award-winning holiday company, we always want our customers to have the very best holiday experience when travelling with us, so we are investigating this as a matter of priority and will respond directly to Ms McQuillan once we have completed a thorough investigation.

‘Although Ms McQuillan stayed in the hotel for two weeks, no issues were reported until the day before departure, so we were unaware of any dissatisfaction until then.

‘We have a team of in-resort customer helpers and colleagues available on our 24/7 helpline who are always happy to assist and encourage customers to contact us as soon as possible if they wish to discuss anything to do with their holiday.’

An Australian actress has divided fans with ‘cringe’ moments from her lavish wedding.

Scarlet Vas, who is best known for her role as police officer Mishti Sharma in Neighbours, tied the knot with TikTok star Tayo Ricci in Mykonos, Greece over the weekend.

The bride, 28, looked stunning on her special day, wearing a gorgeous white boho-inspired BERTA gown and her hair styled up and then later down in loose curls with a diamond headpiece. 

She completed her look with a diamond necklace, drop earrings and opted for elegant makeup with a neutral palette.

But Scarlet’s wedding day left fans wincing, after a video was shared to Instagram of her and Tayo exchanging vows.

In the footage, Tayo asks his new wife to rate his kiss ‘out of 10’.

‘Okay,’ Scarlet says in a baby voice. ‘You may kiss the bride.’

The pair lean in for a sweet kiss before Scarlet speaks again with the same squeaky voice.

‘Oh my gosh… One thousand!’ she answers.

‘Just one thousand?’ her husband asks, before she replies, ‘One thousand million trillion out of 10!’

Fans took to the comments section to poke fun at the awkward video and the voice Scarlet used in the video.

‘Imagine you have to listen her voice every day,’ one user wrote.

‘Cringe,’ another simply added, while one commented, ‘Clout chasers. I predict divorce in less than 2 years.’

‘Serious question. Does she really talk & laugh like that in real life or is it just for the camera? Having to listen to that as her friend would make me cringe,’ someone added.

She also posted a gallery of videos to her Instagram Stories, capturing her unique approach to celebrating her special day with Tayo.

One clip showed the newlyweds dancing up a storm to Psy’s hit K-Pop song Gangnam Style.

Another loved-up video showed the lovebirds enjoying a kiss as husband and wife on the venue’s balcony against the sunset background.

Scarlet also shared a clip of her and her husband cutting their three-tiered iced wedding cake. 

The crowd could be heard roaring with excitement as the newlyweds hammed it up for the cameras.

The pair then put on a risqué display for their guests, as Tayo performed a strip-style dance for his wife which ended with her being pinned to the floor.

‘Ceremony and Mykonos sunsets. Epic,’ she wrote next to the footage.

Scarlet’s real voice can be heard in previous episodes of Neighbours, which she starred in from 2017 to 2018. 

She’s since become a successful OnlyFans model.

The stunner appears to be living her best life after leaving Australia for the U.S. several years ago.

She now boasts an impressive 982,000 followers on Instagram and has appeared in a number of viral TikTok videos. She has 5.2million followers on TikTok.

Horrifying moment passenger is pushed into the sea to his death by ferry crew when he tried to leap on to the departing vessel at Greek port

•  Shocking footage shows man, 36, being pushed into the sea by ferry crew 

By Rachael Bunyan

Updated: 09:08 EDT, 6 September 2023

A British policewoman who died following a reported accidental fall in Corfu may have unwittingly drunk alcohol laced with methanol, Greek cops fear. 

The 22-year-old victim, who has not yet been named but worked for Surrey Police, was found with severe head injuries on a side street in Kavos in the early hours of Friday.

She had arrived on the island just hours before the fatal fall that saw her plunge from a height of several metres, reports the Sun. 

The Briton had decided to stay out while her colleague went back to their hotel on Friday night. Greek authorities believe the fatal injuries she sustained outside a bar are compatible with an ‘accidental fall’. 

But authorities on the Greek island are now investigating whether the victim had unwittingly drunk alcohol that had been laced with methanol, which is much more toxic than the ethanol found in regular alcoholic drinks.

Leading coroner Ioannis Aivatidis, who detected alcohol on the Briton’s breath, told the Sun: ‘There are questions as to what kind of alcohol she consumed. Had it been illicitly tampered with? 

‘Was she so intoxicated because [illegal] methanol was in the alcoholic drinks she had consumed? The answer lies in the toxicology tests that will be carried out.’

In the hours after the police officer was found dead, authorities in Corfu announced that 28 bars would be shut down after they were found to be serving adulterated alcoholic drinks to customers. 

Sources said that the closures were ‘more than coincidental’ given that they occurred following raids that were conducted shortly after the Briton was found dead. 

Aivatidis told the Mirror there was no evidence the British police officer had been attack. Instead, he said that a postmortem examination had revealed she had fallen from a height of several metres. 

Aivatidis told the Sun: ‘Findings included fractures to her thorax, stomach and a small rupture of the spleen. But it was a traumatic head injury that killed her.’

The coroner said the findings suggest there was no criminal involvement, which echoes the view of Greek police. 

He said it was unclear whether the victim had been with her friends at the time of her accidental fall.

Aivatidis said: ‘I believe she may have confused the building she was staying in and may have fallen attempting to enter the one she was found outside of in an unorthodox manner.

‘What remains unclear and is now part of the [police probe] is whether she was abandoned by friends after the fall.’  

Aivatidis said he would be carrying out further examinations of the 22-year-old’s body including toxicology tests today.

The victim was allegedly left bleeding on the street – possibly for hours – before she was found, according to Greek media.  

The woman’s friends, who had travelled to Corfu on holiday with the victim, had told Corfu police that her phone was missing at some point during Friday night, suggesting that it might have been stolen. 

But her mobile was found ‘nearby’, making the accidental manner of her death ‘now much more possible’, Aivatidis said. ‘But the autopsy will be definitive. It will rule out other possible scenarios.’ 

The victim’s stepfather, who is also a police officer, is expected to arrive on the island to repatriate the policewoman’s body back to the UK this week.  

Meanwhile, Surrey Police said in a statement on Saturday: ‘Yesterday we were sadly made aware of the sudden death of a serving office whilst they were on holiday in Corfu, Greece.

‘We are working to support both their family and their colleagues here during this extremely difficult time. 

‘An investigation into the circumstances of the death is being led by the Greek authorities and we await further updates from them as they conduct their enquiries.’

The Surrey Police Federation echoed these sentiments and said the police officer’s death was ‘devastating’.

It added: ‘The thoughts of all at Surrey Police Federation are with the officer’s family, friends and close colleagues at this time. Both the Federation and the force are supporting them.’

A spokesperson for the Foreign Office told MailOnline: ‘We are supporting the family of a British woman who has died in Greece and are in contact with the local authorities’.

Brit, 20, fights for life after quad bike crash in a field in Zante

• Vehicle swerved off road and into field in Agios Leon, according to local reports

By James Callery

Updated: 16:30 EDT, 31 August 2023

Fire weather  

by John Vaillant (Sceptre £25, 432pp)

With what sometimes seems like half of Europe and North America ablaze this summer, Fire Weather, the latest book by the Vancouver-based writer and journalist John Vaillant, could not be a more timely work. Climate change is unleashing the destructive power of fire in new ways.

As Vaillant highlights, we are seeing effects scientists have been predicting for decades. Nine of California‘s 20 largest wildfires have occurred since 2020.

Fire seasons around the world now seem relentless in their devastation. Vaillant quotes a senior officer in the Californian fire service who told him, ‘The fire season used to run from May to October. Over the last decade it’s changed to year-round.’

On a single day, July 7, 2017, the Canadian province of British Columbia saw 142 separate wildfires ignite.

High heat, drought conditions and wind combined to turn many of them into uncontrollable blazes. 

Until we radically curb our addiction to fossil fuels, Vaillant argues, these problems will only get worse.

The focus of his eloquent book is this century’s most intense urban fire, which engulfed the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada in May 2016.

Often nicknamed ‘Fort McMoney’, the place has been described as ‘the ultimate boomtown’. In the previous 50 years, the town’s population had increased fiftyfold. Surrounded by forest, it is, in Vaillant’s words, ‘an island of industry in an ocean of trees’.

The reason for Fort McMurray’s success lies just below the forest floor. The Alberta tar sands is one of the biggest known petroleum reserves in the world, and the city grew rich from extracting and processing the bitumen deposits in which the oil is hidden.

It’s a huge operation and visible from space. From 6,000 miles above Earth, Fort McMurray’s bitumen mining and upgrading complex can just be seen.

Unfortunately, the oil boomtown is also sitting amidst one of the world’s wildfire centres. MWF-009 (McMurray Wildfire 009), as it was officially designated, ‘began as a random forest fire’. It was first spotted at 4pm on Sunday, May 1. In less than a day it had increased in size by 500 times and it was heading towards Fort McMurray.

At a Press conference on the Monday, one of the men in charge of the response to the fire said, ‘We’re blessed that we didn’t have 35km winds in the wrong direction.’ 

The following day they got precisely that. At that speed, equivalent to 22mph, a fire like 009 could travel a mile in a minute.

Yet the authorities seemed blind to the approaching catastrophe. ‘People should carry on their normal day, and also be prepared’ was the advice, given at the time the fire was spiralling out of control. 

On the morning of May 3, the 88,000 inhabitants of Fort McMurray were, as Vaillant writes, ‘living in a parallel reality, as oblivious to their environment as the passengers on the Titanic were to theirs’.

The fire had already jumped the Athabasca River, a third of a mile wide, and was threatening the city. It was rapidly becoming out of control.

A photo taken in the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan showed that MWF-009 was ‘plainly visible 80 miles away’. Residents were soon all too aware of the danger they were in.

‘We couldn’t see the sun any more,’ a local radio host reported. ‘There was ash raining down, and there was this red hue downtown.’

The city’s real estate was offering the fire new fuel. At the height of the blaze, a house could go from ‘fully there . . . to fully gone’ in five minutes.

Despite the heroics of the city’s firefighters, sending them to face the flames was, in Vaillant’s striking phrasing, ‘like sending plumbers to confront a bursting dam’.

Flight was now the only option. Tens of thousands of people exited Fort McMurray in cars and trucks. 

Throughout the afternoon of May 3, ‘cell phones and dashcams captured citizens cursing, praying and weeping as they tried to escape a suddenly annihilating world where fists of heat pounded on the windows, the sky rained fire, and the air came alive in roaring flame’.

Astonishingly, no one died in the Fort McMurray Fire, but thousands of houses and other buildings were destroyed or damaged.

Around the city, 2,300 square miles of forest burned. Some areas of the fire were not fully extinguished until August of the following year.

Fort McMurray is no longer a boomtown. Of those who fled, nearly a quarter — 20,000 people — chose not to return.

In addition to providing a clear-eyed portrait of its human cost, Fire Weather sets the Fort McMurray disaster in the wider context of the hotter world our actions have created.

‘This is not Planet Earth as we found it’, Vaillant writes and his powerful book is a must read for anyone interested in our collective future.

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.