Greek minister says wildfires reduced to ‘scattered hotspots’ – as it happened

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Greece's opposition wasted little time Tuesday lambasting prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' centre right government for what has been described as a lacklustre response to the inferno.

Stefanos Kasselakis, who heads the main opposition Syriza party, said that he had only witnessed three water-bombing aircraft in action - and not the 35 that officials had cited - when he visited the operational headquarters of the civil protection ministry.

I will say yet again that from the eruption of the fire on Sunday the time that it took to respond by air was five minutes and with fire engines seven minutes.

The reality is this: that despite the speed of the operational response - the new dogma that in combination with the technical support of drones has been enforced with the hundreds of fires confronted this summer - when extreme conditions prevail the problem becomes insurmountable.