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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Words by Katy Fallon and Giorgos Christides. Photographs by Alexandros Avramidis

‘Fire on fire’: how migrants got blamed for Greece’s devastating blazes

Buckled sheets of corrugated-iron roofing and charred breezeblock walls are all that remain of a house on a hilltop. In the background are hills burned brown by fire
The charred area where the bodies of 18 migrants were found following a wildfire that swept through the hills near the village of Avantas, in Evros, Greece. Photograph: Alexandros Avramidis/The Guardian

Dr Pavlos Pavlidis leans back in his chair, puffing on a cigarette in his office at the morgue of Alexandroupolis University hospital. Pavlidis has witnessed many horrors in the two decades he has been the coroner in Evros, a region in north-east Greece located on a well-trodden migration trail.

But even for him, it has been difficult to look at the scorched remains of the people caught in the wildfires this summer.

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