Two children among 18 charred bodies in Avantas, Dadia forest, coroner says
Two children are among the 18 charred bodies found by a forestry official at the Dadia forest area earlier in the day, Alexandroupolis coroner Pavlos Pavlidis said on Tuesday.
The bodies were foundnear the Avantas village, 10 km north of Alexandroupolis where fires have been raging since Saturday morning.
After a visual (macroscopic) examination, Pavlidis told Athens-Macedonian News Agency, "There were a total of 18 charred bodies, all of them males and two of them little children. They were found in groups of two or three and at a distance of 500 meters, obviously as they were trying to escape, and some of them had burnt to death inside a sheephold. As police accompanying me explained, the region serves as a passageway for irregular migrants, on the path from the borders to the hinterland, through the Rodopi mountains."
The bodies will be tranferred to the hospital on Wednesday for autopsies. He added that rumors about another 8 bodies elsewhere were not confirmed.
Migration minister
Migration and Asylum Minister Dimitris Kairidis expressed his sorrow over the migrants' death, and condemned "the murderous activity of criminal human traffickers and all those facilitating them, and the trade of irregular flows, which threatens the lives of many migrants on land and sea on a daily basis."
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