Greek wildfires produce 700km smoke cloud stretching across southern Europe

The scorching heat and raging wildfires are still spreading across several regions.

By Jimmy Nsubuga

Scorching heat and raging wildfires are continuing to spread across several regions of southern Europe, with Greece bearing the brunt of the devastation.

One indication of the scale of the problem was shared by the Copernics EU satellite in an image that captured a 700km-long smoke cloud stretching across parts of the continent.

The ‘Image of the Day’ showed the area on Tuesday morning after wildfires had started in Greece.

“This morning, at 08:37 UTC, #Sentinel3 captured a massive smoke cloud (~700km long) generated by the ongoing in East Macedonia, engulfing the central Mediterranean Basin,” Copernicus EU wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

It comes after Greek firefighters backed by aircraft battled a blaze spreading outside Athens for a second day on Wednesday.

It was one of hundreds ravaging a country where wildfires have already killed 20 people this week.

Several hundred have fled their homes nationwide since fires erupted in the north of the country on Saturday, fanned by heat and high winds in the summer’s second major outbreak.

We remind our readers that publication of articles on our site does not mean that we agree with what is written. Our policy is to publish anything which we consider of interest, so as to assist our readers  in forming their opinions. Sometimes we even publish articles with which we totally disagree, since we believe it is important for our readers to be informed on as wide a spectrum of views as possible.