An official confirmation reveals two children were found among 18 people burned in the raging forest fire near the village of Avantas, 10 km north of Alexandroupoli, on Tuesday.
The 18 bodies were found in a rural area in Evros when an inspection was made at the site by Pavlos Pavlidis, a coroner based in Alexandroupoli, reported amna.gr.
Mr Pavlidis reported a total of 18 male bodies and among them, two children.
“They were all found in groups of two or three people at a distance of 500 meters, apparently while trying to escape, and some of them were burned in a shack,” Mr Pavlidis made public.
Police accompanying Mr Pavlidis explained, the region where the bodies were found is a known passageway for “irregular migrants, on the path from the borders to the hinterland, through the Rodopi mountains.”
Migration and Asylum Minister, Dimitris Kairidis, confirmed the bodies were migrants and expressed sorrow over the deaths of the 18 people including the two children, according to Ekathimerini.
In an announcement, Mr Kairidis condemned “the murderous activity of criminal human traffickers and all those facilitating them, and the trade of irregular flows, which threatens the lives of many migrants on land and sea on a daily basis.”
The bodies will be removed to a hospital to be examined post mortem today.
Mr Pavlidis was unable to confirm rumours about eight bodies found at another location.
The death toll has hit 20 people for the second wave of wildfires to blaze through Greece, according to the latest reports on Tuesday August 22. A suspected migrant was found dead in the area and an elderly shepherd had also been found dead in the north of Athens on Monday.
Source: amna.gr and Ekathimerini.
