Search operations to find three missing tourists on two Greek islands have intensified after police announced that two holidaymakers had been found dead on other islands over the weekend.
Rescue teams supported by sniffer dogs, helicopters and drones have been scouring the Cycladic islands of Sikinos and Amorgos for two French women and an American man who went missing last week.
Describing the search effort as “relentless”, the mayor of Sikinos, Vassilis Marakis, said emergency services had spent Monday focusing on rocky terrain into which the two female hikers may have wandered.
“We’ve been out all morning searching,” Marakis said. “Volunteers have arrived from Santorini, firefighters, the police, a specially trained dog have all been looking, but the terrain is rocky and full of ravines. The effort has been huge, but the area where they disappeared is difficult and, sadly, we still haven’t found them.”
In the space of nine days, six holidaymakers, including the British TV presenter and nutritionist Michael Mosley, have either been found dead or gone missing on Greek islands. It is believed that all set out on hikes in unusually high temperatures.
Mosley, 67, is thought to have died within hours of going for a walk during which he took a wrong turn and ended up scaling a rocky peninsula on Symi, another remote island in the Aegean. He was discovered on 9 June within metres of a seaside restaurant resort, five days after his wife, Dr Clare Bailey, reported him missing.
On Saturday, Greek search teams announced that the body of a 74-year-old Dutchman, missing for almost a week, had been located by a fire service drone in a gorge on the eastern Aegean island of Samos, close to the Turkish coast. He had also gone out on a hike in hot weather.
Hours later, on Sunday, police announced that a 70-year-old American tourist, who had been missing since Thursday on the isle of Mathraki, west of Corfu, had been found dead on a remote beach. The hunt for the unidentified man, who was eventually found by another holidaymaker, had been paused the previous day after strong winds prevented emergency services from reaching the island.
On Amorgos, the eastern-most island in the Cyclades chain, the search for a retired Los Angeles police officer, Albert Calibet, continued for a sixth day on Monday, without success.
The 59-year-old former sheriff, a regular visitor to Amorgos, went missing after setting out alone for a four-hour hike on a day when temperatures reached 40C.
Sikinos’s mayor said the two French tourists, aged 73 and 64, had embarked on a hike when the Aegean isle was experiencing a bout of “abnormally hot” June weather.
“It was extremely hot on Friday, the day they went missing,” he said. “We had heard about such incidents happening on other islands and now it’s happened here. Yesterday, we even had a coastguard boat patrolling our island’s coast. I won’t hide that I am very worried.”
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The search operations have been coordinated from the island of Syros, the Aegean Sea’s administrative hub.
Concern has mounted that foreign visitors to Greece are not being properly informed of the risks posed by overexertion in such temperatures. The Mediterranean country is on the frontline of the climate emergency.
“In all my years in the police service, overseeing such operations, I can’t remember anything like it,” said one commander on Syros.
“But we have to bear in mind that this has been the hottest June ever and all of these people decided to go out hiking. You can’t arrest someone for deciding to take a walk, and you can’t force them to stay indoors, you can only hope that while on holiday tourists will have their wits about them in such heat.”