Amphibious aircraft

Greece on Thursday approved the purchase of seven firefighting aircraft from Canada to bolster its defences against wildfires, which have ravaged the country in recent years.

The deal passed by Parliament is to buy seven DHC-515 aircraft from the Canadian Commercial Corp for 361 million euros ($392 million).

In addition to the purchase of the seven new Canadair aircraft, Greece has sent a formal invitation to the manufacturer to undertake the upgrade of the CL-415 fleet

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will travel to Canada later this week, where he will finalize a deal to purchase seven DHC-515 Firefighters, the newest water bombers built by De Havilland, Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper reported Wednesday. 

The large wildfire in Aspropyrgos, western Greece, reached the perimeter of the Hellenic Air Force's 112 Combat Wing at Elefsina Air Base earlier on Tuesday but was quickly stopped, Greek media reported.

The wildfires raging on the islands of Rhodes, Evia, Corfu and several locations in mainland Greece caused the first human casualties Tuesday.

Two Greek Air Force pilots died on the island of Evia when a Canadair CL-215 firefighting plane crashed near the town of Karystos shortly after 2 p.m., an Air Force spokesman announced.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the Fire Service's special aerial operations units at the Elefsina Air Base, the 383rd Special Operations & Air Firefighting Squadron, and the 355th Tactical Transport Squadron on Saturday to express his support for the crews fighting to contain numerous wildfires that have ravaged areas in Attica over the past week amid scorching temperatures. 

Cyprus and Croatia are to deploy firefighting aircraft to Greece through the EU-wide Civil Protection Mechanism, following an additional request from the General Secretariat of Civil Protection, to help battle wildfires that have intensified as the Kleon heat wave continues.

Cyprus has provided two Air Tractors and Croatia one CL-415 from the rescEU fleet of firefighting planes.

The aircraft managed to eventually land

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Be-200ChS aircraft of the Russian Naval Aviation crashed near Adana, Turkey at about 15.10 Moscow Time on Saturday, August 14, 2021. The plane was part of the forces fighting with wildfires in Turkey.

Beriev-200 came to the rescue