Tornadoes and violent hailstorms killed six tourists including two children in northern Greece late Wednesday, police said.
Estimates of the injured ranged from at least 30 to more than 100 after the sudden and violent storm hit Halkidiki, near the city of Thessaloniki, on Wednesday night.
Trees were uprooted, vans flipped over and motorcycles scattered through the streets by gale-force winds, as rain and hail pelted the streets.
Videos from Halkidiki, which sits on the Greek mainland facing the Aegean Sea, shows lighting striking a tower block while wind and rain lashes against vehicles.
Two elderly Czech tourists were killed when strong winds and water swept away their travel trailer, police said.
Elsewhere in the region, a woman and an 8-year-old boy, both Romanian nationals, were killed after a roof collapsed on a restaurant in Nea Plagia.
A man and a young boy, both Russians, died after a tree collapsed near their hotel in the seaside town of Potidea, authorities said.
According to port police, a fisherman in his sixties was also missing.
Such severe weather is unusual in Greece, where summers are typically hot and dry. Meteorologist Klearxos Marousakis described conditions as ‘extremely unusual’ for this time of year.
‘It is the first time in my 25-year career that I have lived through something like this,’ Athansios Kaltsas, director of the Nea Moudania Medical Centre, where many of the injured were treated for fractures, told Greek television.
‘It was so abrupt, and so sudden,’ he said.
Kaltsas said patients taken to the clinic ranged in age from 8 months to over 70. Some suffered head injuries from trees and other falling objects.
Meteorologists forecast it would continue to rain in the area until about 9 a.m. on Thursday.
The freak storm only lasted about 20 minutes, according to witnesses interviewed by state television ERT.
Authorities declared Halkidiki in a state of emergency, and Greece’s newly appointed citizens’ protection minister was due to visit early on Thursday.
At least 140 rescue workers were involved in the operation, emergency chief Vassilis Varthakoyannis said.
The minister for citizen protection, Michalis Chryssohoidis, will visit the site on Thursday morning.
The storms came after temperatures in Greece soared to 37 degrees centigrade (98 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past two days.
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