July 4, 2021: A huge forest blaze raging in Cyprus has killed four people, destroyed homes and forced evacuations of villages as Greece, Israel and other countries deployed fire-fighting aircraft to the Mediterranean island.
The fire began Saturday afternoon and has swept through districts in the southern foothills of the Troodos mountains as the country grapples with a blistering heatwave.
“It is a tragedy,” President Nicos Anastasiades said on Twitter, describing it as “the largest fire since 1974” when the island was divided after Turkey occupied its northern third. Anastasiades visited a crisis management centre in the village of Vavatsinia, located a few kilometres east of the blaze, on Sunday morning. “We will not leave anyone abandoned in the destruction of the fire.”
Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said that four charred bodies were found outside the village of Odos in Larnaca district. “All the indications support the fact that these are the four missing persons we have been searching for since yesterday,” he said, adding that all four are thought to be Egyptian nationals.
A 67-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion he started the blaze. He was seen by an eyewitness leaving the village of Arakapas in his car at the same time the fire started there on Saturday, police said.
Janez Lenarcic, European Commissioner for Crisis Management, said on Saturday its “aerial firefighting capacity” had been mobilised, with Italy and Greece sending planes to help. Two other firefighting planes were scheduled to take off from Israel. Israel’s firefighting authority said that the planes were due to land in Larnaca, where they would join the Italian and Greek teams and also Spanish and British crews.
Cyprus has experienced extended heatwaves and periods of drought in recent years.
In the past few days, the temperature has hit 40 degrees Celsius inland and there has been very little rain since mid-April.
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