Death Toll Rises to 91 in Greece Wildfire

Fire officials in Greece raised the death toll from a wildfire that raged through a coastal area east of Athens to 91 and reported that 25 people were missing Sunday, six days after Europe’s deadliest forest fire in more than a century. Before the national fire service updated the official number of fatalities, it stood at 86 as hundreds of mourners attended a Sunday morning memorial service for the victims in the seaside village hardest-hit by the blaze, reported CBS News. The fire sped flames through the village of Mati without warning on July 23. A database maintained by the Center for the Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Brussels shows it as the deadliest wildfire in Europe since 1900. The vast majority of victims died in the fire itself, though a number drowned in the sea while fleeing the flames. Greek authorities have said they have reason to believe the fire resulted from arson and turned so deadly because winds of up to 100 kilometers per hour buffeted the pine-forested seaside resorts at the time.