A Greek air force water-dropping plane crashed while diving into a wildfire in southern Greece on Tuesday, killing both pilots.
A state ERT TV video showed the bright yellow CL-215 aircraft releasing its load of water on the island of Evia before its wingtip apparently snagged in a tree branch. Moments later it disappeared into a deep fold in the ground from which a fireball erupted.
A Canadair aircraft drops water over a wildfire in Vati village, on the Aegean Sea island of Rhodes, southeastern Greece.A third successive heat wave in Greece pushed temperatures back above 40 degrees across parts of the country Tuesday amid a string of evacuations from fires that have raged out of control for days, whipped on by strong winds.
“On the other fronts we have to deal with many cases of the fire flaring up again,” Ioannis Artopios said. Among them was Serbian basketball star Philip Petrusev, a player for the Philadelphia 76ers who was vacationing on Rhodes with his partner Tiana Sumakovic. In Athens, authorities resumed afternoon closing hours at the ancient Acropolis, as part of broader measures to cope with the high heat.
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