Firefighters have rescued a group of migrants trapped in a forest in northeastern Greece as flames from a massive wildfire approached, authorities said.
The European Commission has described the blaze engulfing swathes of the country as the "largest wildfire ever recorded in the EU".
The Greek fire department said that the group of 25 people had become trapped in the forest between two villages in the Evros region, which borders Turkey.
No injuries were reported. There was no immediate information on the group's nationalities.
The blaze, now in its 14th day, has claimed the lives of 20 people whose bodies were found last week.
All are believed to have been migrants who had recently crossed the border. Greece's Disaster Victim Identification Team has been tasked with identifying the remains.
A multinational force of more than 580 firefighters backed by six planes and two helicopters is battling the wildfire that began on 19 August.
Within days it had joined with other blazes to form the largest single wildfire in a European Union country since records began in 2000.
It has razed homes and vast tracts of forest, scorching more than 81,000 hectares.
Overnight, the border town of Soufli was put on alert for possible evacuation as a huge wall of flames approached.
To date, thousands of homes have been evacuated in villages and towns in northeastern Greece due to the fire, although the vast majority have since been allowed back.
Greece has been stricken by hundreds of wildfires this summer, with dozens of new blazes breaking out each day. The vast majority are extinguished quickly before they spread, but the Evros blaze has proved particularly tough to control.
Another persistent blaze has been burning for more than a week in a national park on the slopes of Mount Parnitha, on the fringes of Athens, with more than 160 firefighters trying to extinguish ongoing flare-ups.
With its own firefighting forces stretched to the limit, Greece called on other European countries for help, and has received hundreds of firefighters and a dozen aircraft from France, Germany, Spain, Cyprus, Romania, Albania, Serbia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic.
Arson is suspected in some of the smaller fires that were quickly brought under control, and authorities have made several arrests across the country. But the causes of the major blazes are still under investigation.
Several people, all Greeks, have been arrested in the past two weeks on suspicion of arson for allegedly deliberately attempting to start wildfires.
However, speaking in parliament yesterday, the Greek Prime Minister implied that migrants may have been responsible for the Evros fire, but acknowledged that an investigation into the causes is ongoing.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis provided no evidence to support his claim.
"It is almost certain that the causes were manmade. And it is also almost certain that this fire started on routes that are often used by illegal migrants who have entered our country," Mr Mitsotakis said. "We don’t know if it was negligence or deliberate."
Last week, three people were arrested in northeastern Greece and charged with a series of crimes for allegedly rounding up 13 people from Syria and Pakistan and forcing them into a car trailer.
The three defendants, two Greeks and one Albanian national, had accused the migrants of setting fires, without having any evidence to support their claim.
Mr Mitsotakis said that incidents of vigilantism would not be tolerated.
