The two-man crew of a firefighting helicopter was killed in a midair collision in Greece as forces battled multiple wildfires that have devastated swathes of land, with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warning of “extremely difficult” days ahead.
Two hired Bell helicopters collided while battling a wildfire in the Psatha area west of Athens, the fire service said on Sunday.
“The pilots…were taken unconscious to hospital, where their death was confirmed,” the fire department’s director of communications Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said in a televised address.
The crew of the second helicopter was successfully rescued.
The fire department grounded all Bell helicopters in the area pending an investigation, state TV ERT said.
The two dead are a Dane and a Greek, Mitsotakis said in a statement.
The accident raised the death toll from this week’s Greek fires to five, after three firefighters died in Crete and the Peloponnese.
