Marita Moloney
Live reporter

Welcome back to our live coverage as evacuations continue from the Greek island of Rhodes, where wildfires are still burning out of control.

Hundreds of holidaymakers have already landed back in the UK, with more repatriation flights set to take off from the island today.

Yesterday, we heard from many tourists forced to flee their hotels and sleep on the floors of temporary accommodation, including schools and theatres, or outside as fires spread towards resorts.

I'm here with Emily Atkinson and James Gregory in London, and together with our reporters on the ground in Greece, we'll be bringing you the latest on the situation so stay with us.

Jack Burgess
BBC News Live reporter

Before we pause our live page on wildfires in Greece, here's a quick recap our today's main developments.

• Blazes in Rhodes are still "out of control" according to the island's deputy mayor - and fires have forced 19,000 people to leave their homes

• Evacuation orders have also been issued in Evia

• In Corfu, authorities have blamed arson for the fires - but the deputy mayor says the situation is now largely under control

• EasyJet is planning another repatriation flights from Rhodes to the UK tomorrow, while Jet2 has announced four flights for this evening
• One flight returned from Greece into the UK today, bringing exhausted passengers one of whom described the fires as being "like an apocalypse".

Today's page was edited by Alexandra Fouché, James FitzGerald, Megan Fisher and Jack Burgess.

The writers were Oliver Slow, Antoinette Radford, James Gregory, Adam Durbin, Emily Atkinson, Sam Hancock and Ali Abbas Ahmadi.

Sam Hancock
Live reporter

Image source, Gemma Broadhurst

I've been speaking to Gemma Broadhurst, a mother-of-two who arrived on Rhodes for her family's annual summer holiday on Thursday. They had planned to be there for more than a week.

They were staying at a hotel in Kiotari but were evacuated at around 3pm local time on Saturday, she tells me. "We had to run for it - the fire was about a mile behind us and following fast," she says, adding her family only had a chance to take around "30% of their belongings" - luckily their passports made the cut.

Gemma's family then made their way, on foot, to the nearest hotel they could find - it was about two hours away. They were joined by hundreds of others.

They're now safe and settled at a small hotel in Lindos, where she says they're being looked after "unbelievably well". The family's holiday provider Jet2 is also in the process of trying to get them a flight back to the UK.

"Fires are still burning and other areas are still being evacuated as we speak," she tells me, adding "we are desperate to get home".

Image source, Gemma Broadhurst

Gwyn Loader
Chief correspondent, BBC Wales Newyddion S4C

I've just landed on Rhodes with a cameraman; we're here to report on the wildfires for BBC Wales' Welsh-language news programme Newyddion.

There were only 37 passengers on our EasyJet flight out of Gatwick - the airplane had a total capacity of 180.

The pilot gave a stark warning over the Tannoy before take-off about travelling to Rhodes, offering a chance for passengers to disembark and re-book flights for another time. Eight people took up the offer, including one young boy in tears.

“Travelling to Rhodes for a holiday at the moment is a terrible idea," the pilot told us, adding that some people on the Greek island had been "stranded and sleeping at the airport".

The rest of his warning went as follows:

Image source, Reuters

Tourists planning overseas holidays this summer should take the wildfires in Greece as a "big, big warning", says a leading UK climate expert.

BBC climate editor Justin Rowlatt noted earlier that while reports suggest the fires in Greece were started by arsonists, it is the dry conditions caused by the extended heatwave in southern Europe that have allowed them to take hold in such a dramatic way.

Sir David King, former UK chief scientific adviser and Climate Crisis Advisory Group chair, now warns that many people will die from heat stress due to the high temperatures in the region.

Speaking to the PA news agency from Greece, Sir David says: "There's no coincidence at all that climate change has driven these higher temperatures, and the higher temperatures are causing the fires that are spreading.

"The only way to tackle this is deep and rapid emissions reductions. In terms of greenhouse gases, we have virtually doubled the amount of greenhouse gases compared to the pre-industrial level," he says.

Local residents have been gathering in a beachside restaurant terrace in the Kiotari area of Rhodes to take shelter from the wildfires sweeping parts of the Greek island.

They say the fire has been burning for days and fear the situation will get worse with high winds forecast later this week.

Artemis Papavasiliou, a Rhodes resident who has been evacuated from her village, has said she did not know whether her home was burning.

"Send help... we don't know what to do," she says.

Antoinette Radford
Live reporter

Authorities on the Greek island of Corfu say arson is to blame for the extreme fires across Rhodes.

But Prof Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impact and Research at the Met Office, says it doesn't matter what started the fires - climate change has made them worse.

He says human activities - like burning fossil fuels and deforestation - have put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, warmed the planet and resulted in weather more conducive to fires across the Mediterranean.

"It doesn’t really matter how the fire started, whether it’s an accident or whether it’s deliberate arson", he says.

"The fact is that once the fire started, it will be more severe when the weather is hotter and drier. And human-caused climate change has made the weather hotter and drier in that part of the world,” Betts adds.

Read more about how climate change is linked to wildfires and droughts here.

Our reporter Azadeh Moshiri is inside an airport on Rhodes island as evacuations take place.

From food and water being laid out for people waiting to get out of the airport to people sleeping in gyms and conference rooms, here's what she saw.

Image source, EMMA FARQUHAR

A Scottish family have told of their relief after being carried to safety in a dinghy from the Rhodes wildfires.

Emma and Bruce Farquhar from Inverurie were on holiday with their teenage daughters at the resort of Lardos.

After pushing their hotel to take action, Emma, Bruce, Brodie, 17, and Eilidh, 15, were eventually taken to safety to Pefkos along the coast in a dinghy.

The dinghies could only take six people at a time.

At Pefkos, locals helped the family to their taxi which took them to the airport through heavy traffic and road blockades.

Emma said: "It was chaos, there was buses everywhere, people with cases and bags obviously desperate to find a way to the airport."

The family is now back home safely in Scotland.

Read more on this story here.

Image source, Reuters

The deputy mayor of Corfu says firefighters should have "finished" with the blazes by the end of the day.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's PM programme, Theofanis Skembris notes that while fires - earlier blamed on arsonists - are still burning in three places, they are under control.

Skembris also insists the fires are confined to the mountains and are not currently endangering any lives or properties.

"It's no problem for anyone who like to come to Corfu to come," he adds.

Image source, Reuters

It isn't just Greece battling wildfires; several parts of the world are also struggling to contain blazes this summer:

• Algeria: At least 15 people have been killed and thousands evacuated after more than 97 wildfires broke out across the country
• Canada: Hundreds of wildfires across the country have caused evacuations and shut down airports, and led to re-occurring air quality hazards across Canada and the north-eastern US

And other countries were also affected earlier this month, according to Reuters news agency:

• Russia: One woman died, two people were hospitalised, and more than 40 houses were burnt down in wildfires that began on 12 July in the central Ural region, causing significant damage

• Spain: A now contained wildfire that started on 15 July on the island of La Palma led to the evacuation of 4,000 people
• Switzerland: More than 200 people were forced to evacuate from mountain villages due to fires which were still not completely under control as of 22 July, according to officials

We've been hearing from airlines and travel companies throughout the day.

EasyJet says it's now cancelled all package holidays to affected resorts on Rhodes until Saturday.

It says for bookings this week, customers can reschedule their holiday or request a flight voucher.

The airline also said it's been in touch with customers due to travel to affected resorts up until 10 August “to discuss their options”.

Meanwhile, EasyJet flight-only customers who have been evacuated from their hotel and are currently at the airport are being urged to contact the airline’s airport staff. Any customer wishing to travel back to the UK early can contact its customer services team.

Michael Sheils McNamee
BBC News

Celia Derbyshire, from Cheshire, was on holiday in the resort village of Kiotari, in the south of Rhodes, with her two daughters, Mimi, 12, and Olivia, 15.

The three of them had been heading out to stay at a five-star resort for a week, on a holiday which cost more than £3,000 and booked through holiday provider Tui.

She arrived at her hotel on Friday, and awoke the next day to plumes of black and yellow smoke coming closer to the hotel, and with her daughters fled to the waterfront with hundreds of others.

At the beach, she said people were collected by a makeshift fleet of tourist and fishing boats to bring them out.

She said at that point, the smoke “had gone from a yellow plume in the morning to very acrid black".

“They were screaming ‘women and children first’, [but] that didn’t happen, that didn’t happen at all."

Celia and her two daughters could not access an evacuation point, and booked their own alternative transport home via the island of Kos.

They arrived back in Manchester on Monday morning, which Celia said was a huge relief for her daughters.

Posts denying link between wildfires and climate change spread onlinepublished at 17:17 British Summer Time 24 July 2023

17:17 BST 24 July 2023

Tweets wrongly suggesting that wildfires in Greece have nothing to do with climate change have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times online.

Dozens of accounts on social media have criticised “climate alarmists”, and have highlighted comments from a spokesperson for the Hellenic Fire Service who said "fires are set by human hands".

While wildfires can start naturally (for example, when ignited by a lightning strike), most wildfires in Europe are caused by humans deliberately or by accident, according to the European Environmental Agency, external.

But the hot, dry weather that has hit parts of southern Europe – linked to the Cerberus heatwave – has created ideal conditions for wildfires to take hold and spread.

Scientists say that, in a rapidly warming planet, heatwaves are becoming more frequent and more intense.

“We’ve had, we have and will have fires, which is also one of the results of the climate crisis that we experience with increased intensity,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said last week.

Antoinette Radford
Live reporter

Image source, Reuters

I've been speaking to Dr Matthew Agarwala, an economist at the University of Cambridge with a focus on climate change.

He says while humans are skilled at adapting, climate change is pushing people in Greece "beyond the limits of what they can adapt to".

He says climate change is creating the conditions for wildfires to become extreme, which is "entirely consistent with what climate scientists were predicting".

Agarwala also notes that human infrastructure can't withstand the changing conditions, which are going to continue to have an impact on many people's day-to-day lives - whether they're Greek locals or foreign tourists.

Insaf Abbas
BBC journalist

A British tourist, one of many stranded on Rhodes, has been speaking to me as he boards his EasyJet plane after a 30-hour wait.

Robert Small was on holiday with a group of friends when the wildfires started.

He originally checked into the airport on Saturday afternoon local time.

"We had no information from EasyJet whatsoever.

"When the new plane landed on Sunday morning, they said it was too small to fit everyone on board, and that they had to prioritise who they were letting on.

"They said children and package holiday customers would take priority. That didn't happen."

Robert and his friends left the airport and stayed in a nearby community centre, where he says they were well looked after by locals.

Speaking to me from the plane as he was about to take off, he said he was "very relieved" that his ordeal is finally over.

EasyJet has said it is operating two rescue flights today and a third on Wednesday, as well as nine scheduled flights between Rhodes and the UK. The airline has asked customers wishing to travel back early to contact its customer services team.

Azadeh Moshiri
Reporting from Rhodes

Image source, Reuters

Here at Rhodes airport, holidaymakers have described the fear they felt as fires raged around them. They’ve described their anger at airlines, whom they feel let them down.

But many of them have also described the kindness from locals on the island.

One European tourist grabbed my shoulder, and asked if I was a member of the press. He then told me, with tears in his eyes, "please tell everyone, the people here are heroes. They are heroes".

Airport staff have set up a food distribution station that is regularly topped up with water, warm food, Greek biscuits and peanut butter. They are even supplying sanitary towels for families who’ve had to spend the night at the airport.

I overhear one airport worker tell a tourist, “whenever you need it, it is here”.

Our team experienced that generosity ourselves. As we spend the day at the airport, reporting on the repatriation flights, Rhodes airport workers surprise us with chairs, telling us it would be more comfortable.

An airport shopkeeper has been walking up and down the departures floor, offering tourists more water.

The fury from travellers here is directed at travel companies. Not at the people of Rhodes.

In the last few moments, Tui has said it's cancelled all flights to Rhodes up until this Friday.

But for those who are travelling to hotels directly affected by the fires, their flights have been cancelled until Sunday.

The new statement adds that passengers travelling to areas not affected by fires this weekend will be able to amend their booking or ask for a full refund.

"We appreciate how distressing and difficult it’s been for those who have been evacuated and ask that they continue to follow the advice of the local authorities and keep in touch with our teams," a spokesperson said.

Tomasz Schafernaker
BBC Weather

Searing heat continues to batter southern Europe, but is there any sign of some let-up in the coming days?

On the continent today, we've already seen temperatures hit just shy of 48C (118F) in Sicily - and similar is expected again on Tuesday.

Greece isn't quite that hot, but temperatures are likely to be in the high-30s to low-40s on Tuesday. On Wednesday, temperatures could reach the mid-40s. The winds that have been fanning the wildfires will start to ease from Tuesday and definitely on Wednesday.

Later on in the week, the jet stream is going to take a bit of a dip, bringing temperatures down closer to the climatic average in this part of the world.