WILDFIRES continue to ravage Greece and Turkey amid the eastern Mediterranean region’s worst heatwave for decades.

With temperatures in parts of Greece forecast to reach 45°C, firefighters raced to fully contain a wildfire on the outskirts of Athens today that destroyed or seriously damaged dozens of homes overnight and forced thousands of people to flee.

The fire service took advantage of cooler morning hours to send low-flying helicopters and planes to dump water on charred forest land around Tatoi, 12 miles north of the capital, where more than 500 firefighters had battled through the night to contain the flames.

Authorities said that more than 100 homes and businesses had been seriously damaged or destroyed and more than 500 people had spent the night in hotels used as shelters.

In Turkey, the fires raged for an eighth day today, prompting the evacuation of at least one more neighbourhood and mounting criticism of the government’s inability to bring the blazes under control.

Observers worry that fires in the seaside province of Mugla could jump to two thermal power plants. Flames came within half a mile of the Kemerkoy thermal power plant in the Milas district late on Tuesday before the wind changed direction, helping avert a crisis for the moment.

Firefighters and police water cannons, usually used against political protesters, fought back the flames at night as other rescue workers dug ditches around the plant, according to reporters at the scene.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey had hired four new helicopters from Ukraine that are able to fight fires after dark. Planes sent from Spain and Croatia joined aircraft from Russia, Iran, Ukraine and Azerbaijan earlier on Tuesday.

Authorities have begun investigating the cause of the fires, claiming that they could have been started deliberately by Kurdish militants. Experts, however, mostly point to climate change as the culprit, along with human accidents.

“Southern Europe is on fire,” Greenpeace said today. “This is the world at 1.2°C global heating. We can’t afford to get any warmer.

“Politicians, do your f***ing jobs and stand up to the extractive industries which are perpetuating this.”

In Albania, government officials reported that one person had died of smoke inhalation near the southern city of Gjirokaster, where wildfires forced evacuations.