While the forest fires in northern Athens on Sunday were largely brought under control, at least in the meantime, they continue to rage on the island of Evia and in several areas of the Peloponnese.

On Evia, almost 600 emergency services, including around 100 firefighters each from Romania and the Ukraine, fought to contain the flames.

Nevertheless, another 350 people had to be brought to safety from the beaches of the island on Sunday by ships.

A total of around 2000 people have been brought from Euboea to the mainland so far.

The fires on the second largest Greek island after Crete have been burning since Tuesday and threaten several places.

Michael Martens

Correspondent for Southeast European countries based in Vienna.

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Although the government of the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis continues to enjoy general respect for the swift and largely smooth evacuation of potentially endangered towns, criticism is now being raised outside the capital of Athens' handling of the crisis.

The accusation arises that the province was left in the lurch because most of the forces were used to fight the fires off Athens.

The mayor of Mantoudi, a village on Euboea, complained on Sunday in a conversation with the TV station Skai: "I already have no voice, so often I have asked for additional fire-fighting planes."

The people were left alone in their struggle

Similar accusations came from other local politicians as well as residents of the island: The state was not to be seen, the people were left alone in their struggle. However, significantly more fire-fighting aircraft missions were flown on Euboea on Sunday after the situation near Athens had stabilized for the time being. For days the government has been pointing to the extent of the disaster, which made it impossible to fight all the fires in the country at the same time. Saving human lives has priority, the protection of forests and houses cannot be guaranteed everywhere, Mitsotakis had said in a similar manner. At the same time, it is unofficially pointed out that around four million people live in the greater Athens area, compared to around 220,000 on Euboea.

The growing number of foreign aid workers is a positive development. Aid has already arrived in Greece or is on its way from many EU countries, including Germany. For example, personnel from Hesse should set out on Monday to prepare an aid mission, as the Hessian Ministry of the Interior announced. According to this, more than 164 emergency response forces are to be sent to Athens and the surrounding Attica region for around two weeks. The equipment included ten off-road tank fire engines. Personnel are also to be sent to Greece from Bonn and the Technical Relief Organization. Personnel and material to support the extinguishing work have also already arrived from France, Spain and the Czech Republic or are on the way.also from Switzerland, Israel and Egypt. Cyprus was one of the first EU countries to send fire trucks to Greece.

Although the danger has not yet been averted in the north of Athens, an initial inventory of the damage to date has been started there.

According to this, several hundred houses have been completely or partially burned in the suburbs affected.

Since hundreds of masts were also burned, the power supply partially collapsed.

It is anticipated that it could take up to two weeks before power can be resumed everywhere - provided there are no new fires.

The fire continues in southern Italy too: In northern Sicily, fire-fighting planes were in action in the Madonie nature park on Sunday.

Turkey is fighting the worst forest fires in more than ten years for the twelfth day in a row.

At least six fires were not yet under control on Sunday.