‘Apocalyptic’ Turkey Wildfire Inferno Spread as 14 killed in Blazes Sparked by Record 50C Heatwave

🔥 Flames are closing in on Turkey’s fourth-largest city as wildfires that have killed at least 14 people continue to ravage the country.

More than 1,500 people have fled their homes and one firefighter has died as overnight fires in the forested mountains surrounding Bursa, in northwest Turkey, have spread rapidly.

Flames have scorched 3,000 hectares around the city and more than 1,100 firefighters have battled the flames around Bursa, while the highway linking the city to the capital, Ankara, has been closed as surrounding forests burn.

A firefighter died from a heart attack while on the job, the city’s mayor, Mustafa Bozbey, said in a statement. The governor’s office stated on Sunday that 1,765 people had been safely evacuated from villages to the northeast.

Orhan Saribal, an opposition parliamentarian for the province, described the scene as “an apocalypse”.

Unseasonably high temperatures are fuelling wildfires in Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania and Greece, where people have even been evacuated from suburbs of the capital, Athens.