Greece battles wildfire outside Patras
Firefighters battled to contain a wildfire menacing Greece's third-largest city Patras on Wednesday, one of over 20 blazes that have forced the country to appeal for EU help.
Fierce winds and dry conditions have fuelled fires across the country in a week where a heatwave has baked southern Europe, with Spain, Portugal, Montenegro and Albania also fighting blazes.
Since dawn on Wednesday, 4,850 firefighters and 33 planes were mobilised across Greece, fire service spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said.
Greece was faced with "a very difficult day", with 15 firefighters taken to hospital after battling fires on various fronts, added Vathrakogiannis.
The situation improved outside Patras but a new fire near the ancient archaeological site of Voudeni threatened forested zones and homes, and the area is covered by a thick cloud of smoke, an AFP journalist reported.
A health centre was evacuated on Tuesday, a tow yard with 100 cars burned and several houses were damaged, she said.
In the western Achaia region in the Peloponnese, to which the coastal city of Patras belongs, around 20 villages were evacuated on Tuesday.
"The catastrophe is very big," the mayor of West Achaia, Grigoris Alexopoulos, told Greek news agency ANA.
Other fronts were burning on the popular tourist island of Zante and the Aegean island of Chios, scarred by a huge wildfire in June that ravaged more than 4,000 hectares.
The Greek coastguard said it had helped evacuate nearly 80 people from Chios and near Patras.
Temperatures are due to come close to 40C in parts of western Greece on Wednesday, including the northwest Peloponnese, national weather service EMY forecast.
Greece on Tuesday said it had requested four water bombers from the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to bolster its resources.
"It is certainly the hardest 24 hours of the firefighting season," the president of the firefighter officers' union, Kostas Tsigkas, told public broadcaster ERT.
On Tuesday, "82 fires broke out, a very high number which, combined with violent winds, drought and high temperatures, has created huge difficulties in the extinction efforts", he added.
Winds reaching up to 88 kilometres (54 miles) per hour have lashed the country since last week, fanning a wildfire south of Athens in which one person died.
More than 22,000 hectares (55,000 acres) have burned in Greece this year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
