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Two people have been killed in a huge blaze in Cyprus, bringing the death toll from a series of wildfires on the eastern Mediterranean island and in neighbouring Turkey to 12 amid a brutal heatwave that has pushed temperatures to more than 44C (111F).<\/p>\n
Police said two charred bodies were found on Thursday in a burnt-out car that had been caught up in the Cyprus blaze, which began outside Limassol on Wednesday and, fanned by strong winds, rapidly engulfed a string of mountain villages north of the city.<\/p>\n
The fires, described as the worst on the island in more than half a century, devastated large tracts of southern Cyprus, injuring dozens of people and displacing hundreds. An estimated 250 firefighters battled to contain blazes raging on multiple fronts.<\/p>\n
The government spokesperson, Konstantinos Letymbiotis, said the state \u201cexpresses its deep sorrow \u2026 over the unjust loss of two of our fellow citizens\u201d, adding that what was happening on the island was unprecedented.<\/p>\n
After appeals for help from the Nicosia government, Greece, Egypt, Israel and the UK, which has an RAF base on the island, said on Thursday they would be weighing in with air support and firefighters, while the EU was sending in water-bombing planes.<\/p>\n
By midday, nearly 24 hours after it broke out, the infernos had consumed more than 40 square miles of territory, decimating prime agricultural land and dozens of homes in village communities outside Limassol on the Troodos range.<\/p>\n
Limassol fire aftermath footage<\/span>Footage from the aftermath of fires in Limassol.<\/span><\/p>\n Charalambos Theopemptou, the Green MP who chairs the Cypriot parliament\u2019s environmental committee, spoke of a \u201ctragic situation\u201d with blazes fuelled by extreme high temperatures, gale-force winds and a severe drought.<\/p>\n Temperatures nudging 44C were forecast to rise further on Friday as a week-long heatwave intensified across southern Europe. \u201cWe haven\u2019t seen such devastating fires since the Turkish invasion in 1974,\u201d Theopemptou told the Guardian. \u201cIt\u2019s tragic, people have died, 72 houses and 91 cars have been burned, it\u2019s absolute chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n He said part of the reason for the destruction was that preventive measures had not been taken, including the implementation of a public warning system that an EU directive voted into law in 2022. \u201cIllegal waste dumps haven\u2019t been cleared, [inflammable] vegetation hasn\u2019t been removed, basic infrastructure like big cement water tanks and hose pipe points aren\u2019t in place, all of which has helped the fires spread,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At least six separate wildfires were burning across Turkey, the Turkish agriculture and forestry minister, \u0130brahim Yumakli, said on Thursday, warning that strong winds and scorching heat were creating \u201cextremely dangerous\u201d conditions across the country.<\/p>\n Ten firefighters were killed on Wednesday battling a fire in the western Eski\u015fehir province, with 14 others injured. The fire subsequently spread to Afyonkarahisar, another central province, where several towns and villages were evacuated.<\/p>\n Eski\u015fehir fire footage<\/span>Footage of fires raging in Eski\u015fehir.<\/span><\/p>\n The victims were caught when the flames suddenly changed direction, causing them to be \u201cburned alive\u201d, a local MP said. Turkey has been sweltering since Sunday in temperatures ranging between 6C and 12C above the seasonal norms.<\/p>\n In the northwestern province of Bilecik, fires raged for a fourth consecutive day, as firefighters struggled to contain them. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t intervene. There is no decent road, forests are thick and it\u2019s rocky,\u201d Cemil Karadag, a local resident, said.<\/p>\n Karadag told Reuters the fire had \u201cengulfed our village from two or three sides \u2026 The firefighters couldn\u2019t intervene \u2026 It spread very quickly with the effect of the wind, but, thank God, the centre of our village wasn\u2019t damaged that much.\u201d<\/p>\n A wildfire erupted in the Black Sea province of Sakarya, forcing the closure of a key motorway and the evacuation of several villages and small towns, and others in Karabuk, home of the Unesco world heritage site city of Safranbolu, and Manisa.<\/p>\n Scientists have long warned that burning fossil fuels is making extreme weather events such as heatwaves more likely and more intense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two people have been killed in a huge blaze in Cyprus, bringing the death toll from a series of wildfires on the eastern Mediterranean island and in neighbouring Turkey to 12 amid a brutal heatwave that has pushed temperatures to more than 44C (111F). Police said two charred bodies were found on Thursday in a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[5733,632,5732,5734,2627],"class_list":{"0":"post-12162","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-cyprus","9":"tag-killed","10":"tag-raging","11":"tag-turkey","12":"tag-wildfires"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}