With temperatures soaring up to 46 C, firefighters in Greece struggled Friday to contain a blaze in a national park just 30 kilometres from Athens.
A heat wave, paired with high winds, has fuelled the country's worst forest fires in more than a decade.
Flames from a forest fire in the Mount Parnitha National Park, some 30 km northwest of Athens, are seen on the skyline behind a penthouse apartment in the city centre on Thursday.
(Dimitri Messinis /Associated Press)
On Friday afternoon, about 300 soldiers joined 150 firefighters and volunteers at Mount Parnitha to try to prevent the flames from spreading into nearby residential areas, which were evacuated earlier in the day.
The fire blanketed the capital city in ash and smoke and caused the evacuation of nearby military facilities, a children's summer camp and a casino.
More than 300 fires have been reported since Wednesday across the country. Two men were trapped and killed in a blaze on Thursday when a property was destroyed.
Seven large fires were still burning on Friday afternoon near Athens and in parts of central and northern Greece.
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