Most fires in Greece were started ‘by human hand’, government says

Nearly 20,000 people, most of them tourists, had to flee from Rhodes, which was badly affected by the blazes. Photograph: Dia Images/Getty Images

Most of the 667 fires that have erupted across Greece in recent weeks were started “by human hand”, the country’s senior climate crisis official has said.

As the Mediterranean country emerges from an unprecedented, 15-day period of heatwave-induced infernos, the scale of the destruction is finally being laid bare.