Extreme rainfall and flooding in Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey kill 15

Firefighters recovered the body of a man from a stream in central Greece on Thursday, taking the country’s death toll from flooding to four after severe storms turned streets into raging torrents, hurled cars into the sea and washed away roads and bridges.

Authorities deployed divers and swift water rescue specialists as residents in some of the worst-hit areas took refuge on the roofs of their homes to escape floodwaters that rose to more than 2m.

Vassilis Kikilias, Greece’s minister for climate crisis and civil protection, said more than 885 people have been rescued so far and six have been reported missing.

Flooding triggered by severe storms has also hit neighbouring Bulgaria and Turkey, leaving a total of 15 people dead in the three countries.

Emergency convoy takes aid to survivors of Papua New Guinea landslide

---

Ireland is in store for another weekend of sun with temperatures set to hit 20 degrees

---

Thunderstorm warnings issued after Roscommon records highest temperature of the year

---

Northern Lights set to return to Irish skies on Saturday night

---

Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said: “Our country finds itself, for the third day, dealing with a phenomenon the likes of which we have not seen in the past.”

He noted that some areas have received more than twice the average annual rainfall of Athens in the space of 12 hours.

“The state’s absolute priority at the moment is the rescue … of people from the areas hit by the bad weather and the protection of critical infrastructure,” he said.

The fire department said the body of a man who was reported missing on Wednesday was found in a stream near a village in the Domokos area of central Greece.

Fire department spokesman Vasilis Vathrakogiannis said swift water rescue specialists and divers from the department’s disaster response units, as well as the army, are taking part in rescue efforts and trying to reach remote areas despite roads having been washed away.

The floods follow devastating wildfires that destroyed vast tracts of forest and farmland, burned homes and left more than 20 people dead.

The flooding on Thursday was concentrated mainly in the central town of Karditsa, where people were reportedly seeking safety from rising water levels on the roofs of their homes. More rain was forecast for later in the day.

Tracked vehicles and boats were being used to help evacuate people, but the boats were unable to reach some areas due to the large volume of debris and the strength of the torrents of floodwater.

Frequent lightning meant helicopters were unable to fly, Mr Vathrakogiannis said.

Defence minister Nikos Dendias said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he cut short a trip to Dubai to return to Greece so he could “oversee the greatest contribution of the armed forces in dealing with the consequences of the severe weather”.

Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis postponed his annual state of the economy speech and a news conference scheduled for the weekend in the northern city of Thessaloniki in order to visit the flooded areas.

Police have banned traffic from three regions, including on the island of Skiathos, and have sent numerous emergency phone alerts to people in several parts of the country urging them to avoid venturing outdoors and to move away from basement and ground floor areas of buildings.

On Wednesday, repeated rainstorms also hit the Greek capital, flooding streets and turning part of a major avenue in the city centre into a river of mud that swept people off their feet.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, hundreds of emergency and rescue workers were still wrangling with the aftermath of the floodwaters on Wednesday. Flooding damaged more than 1,700 residences and stores in Istanbul, and more than 30 people were injured, according to Turkish authorities. It also trapped a group of people in the cafeteria of a public library, according to footage circulating online.

[ Weather extremes: What’s causing the heatwave in Ireland, deadly floods in Europe? ]

Among the dead were two people killed in Istanbul, including a citizen of Guinea who was trapped in a basement apartment. Five others were killed in flooding at a bungalow camping site in Kirklareli, in northwestern Turkey, interior minister Ali Yerlikaya said Wednesday. A rescue team was still searching for one person missing in the region.

In Bulgaria, authorities declared a state of emergency in Tsarevo, the worst-affected area on the Black Sea, and evacuated hundreds of people from campsites that had been flooded. A long line of cars jammed the roads out of Tsarevo on Wednesday as tourists and residents tried to leave.

Overflowing rivers destroyed roads and bridges in the region, and video captured buildings being ravaged and cars being swept out to sea. Some communities on the coast still lacked electricity on Wednesday.

“The hopeful news today is that the rain stopped, and the situation is slowly starting to normalise,” prime minister Nikolai Denkov said to reporters on Wednesday.

The amount of rainfall that the southern coast of the country received in a 24-hour period from the storm front, called Daniel, was at least three times the amount of rain it would normally receive in a month, Bulgarian officials said.

The torrential rains in some places came after a summer of parched conditions, and meteorologists have called the extreme rainfall highly unusual. While individual weather events are difficult to link to climate change, authorities have pointed to it as the reason for a dizzying array of extreme weather. - AP/The New York Times