UPDATE: Israeli Firefighters Rush to Greece to Help Battle Wildfire (hat tip Michael)
Panagiotis Efstathiou, a senior Health Ministry official, said more than 49 50 bodies were
taken to hospitals.
"We still have missing (people) who haven't been found. We have about 10
missing," Zaharo Mayor Pantazis Chronopoulos said, adding that soldiers had
begun checking burned houses for more victims.
In what is being described as the worst fires in Greek history, fears for destruction of the ancient ruins of Olympia, a world heritage site and home to the first Olympics, Greece's devastating forest fires close in. .
So many fires breaking out simultaneously in so many parts of the country cannot be a coincidence," Karamanlis said in a nationally televised address. "The state will do everything it can to find those responsible and punish them." ABC News
Frank asked the most obvious question that the mainstream media deliberately ignores. Who set Greece afire? This comes from Skai tv station in Greece, a very unbiased source of news:
The police, the armed forces and the Greek antiterrorism authorities have found arson devices in Greek forest areas which are triggered by mobile phones.
Satellite images reveal that within a space of a single hour, many fires appeared in different locations of Greece. The plan was to make the fire brigate forces overstretch.
It is certainly a terrorist attack. George Karatzaferis, the leader of the right wing party, LAOS, called the day, ‘Greece's 9/11’.
Who did it is anyone’s guess. It could be Greek anarchists or radical groups of Greece’s northern neighbours which have claims on northern Greece. We should never forget that there will be general elections in Greece soon. Who might have an interest from an image of a weak and overstretched state mechanism?
The BBC makes no mention of it in their rather long(winded) piece here: Greek fires threaten ancient city.
A 65-year-old man was arrested and charged with arson and multiple counts of homicide in a fire that killed six people in Areopolis, a town in the southern Peloponnese, said fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis. Separately, two youths were arrested on suspicion of arson in the northern Greek city of Kavala, he said. Their parents were also to face charges, he said.
No names have been released.
UPDATE: 61 dead .......Olympia in jeopardy, the holiest site of ancient Greece.
UPDATE: GREECE FROM SPACE
