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Flights have been arranged to get hundreds of Britons out of Rhodes, as thousands continue to flee wildfires on the Greek island – and new evacuations were announced on Corfu.

Tourists and residents huddled in schools and shelters on Sunday in Rhodes, with many evacuated on private boats from beaches as flames menaced resorts and coastal villages.

Scores of others were forced to spend the weekend sleeping rough, on beaches, pool sun loungers or on the streets.

A total of approximately 19,000 people have been rescued from the island, in one of the largest evacuations in Greek history.

Greece’s Emergency Communications Service has also now published evacuation orders for some areas of Corfu after wildfires were also reported there.

People in the areas of Santa, Megoula, Porta, Palia, Perithia and Sinies on the island have been told to leave on Sunday evening.

How the wildfire chaos in Rhodes unfolded – amid new alerts on Corfu

Tour operators Jet2, TUI and Correndon have cancelled flights leaving for Rhodes in the next few days.

Travel agent Thomas Cook cancelled some upcoming holidays and is offering other customers full refunds should they wish to cancel their trips.

While Easyjet has said it is laying on two repatriation flights from the island on Monday, in addition to the nine flights they already operate between the Rhodes and the UK – providing 421 extra seats to get people out.

The airline also pledged to run another repatriation flight back to the UK on Tuesday and promised to keep the situation under review.

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Why is Rhodes on fire?

No rain forecast after historic evacuation

The flames have left trees black and skeletal and the roads around the island littered with dead animals and near burnt-out cars.

Six people were briefly treated at a hospital for respiratory problems.

A person who fell and broke a leg during a hotel evacuation and a pregnant woman were taken to hospital. The pregnant woman is in good condition, authorities said.

Temperatures are expected to drop below 40C on the island tomorrow but remain in the high 30s.

There is no rain forecast in the next week.

The fire brigade said 19,000 people were moved from homes and hotels, calling it the biggest safe transport of residents and tourists Greece has ever carried out.

Read more:
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Satellite images show smoke from the fires
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Satellite images show smoke from the fires

Evacuation ‘chaos’ amid ‘hotels on fire’

Speaking to Sky News at Rhodes Airport, tourist Tom Mitchell recounted how he and his friend Natalie Taylor were evacuated from their hotel.

He said: “We were at the hotel yesterday and there was lots of smoke. It got to one o’clock this morning and we had an evacuation notice come through on our phones to leave.

“It just felt like chaos really.”

Eventually, a coach arrived and took them to a school in the city.

He praised the locals for all the help offered to stranded tourists as he and Ms Taylor sat in the airport, waiting for their flight home.

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Tourists are ‘furious’ as they take shelter in Rhodes

Another tourist, Kevin Evans, said his wife and three young children – including a six-month-old baby – were evacuated twice on Saturday as the fire rapidly spread.

The family is now stranded in Rhodes Town without accommodation and “no information from the authorities”.

“We were originally in Kiotari in a villa but were moved to Gennadi,” he said.

“It got very crowded but we managed to get into a hotel in Gennadi with a room for the children and mums, while the rest of us slept in the lobby.

“As night fell, we could see the fire on the top of the hills in Kiotari.

“They said all the hotels were on fire.”

At about midnight, the fire started moving to their side of the hill, Mr Evans said, and alerts were going off again.

Another British family spent a night sleeping on the floor of a school after being evacuated from a wildfire on the Greek island of Rhodes.

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Schools are housing evacuated tourists

‘Island is functioning very well’

Coastguard vessels and private boats carried more than 3,000 tourists from beaches on Saturday after the wildfires, which have burned for nearly a week, rekindled in the southeast of Rhodes.

Other parts of Greece’s third most populated island were not affected.

Olga Kefalogianni, Greece’s tourism minister, told Sky News “overall, the island is functioning very well”.

He praised locals for showing “solidarity” with tourists affected by the fires.

Nevertheless, areas popular with many tourists were badly hit.

Many people fled hotels when huge flames reached the seaside villages of Kiotari, Gennadi, Pefki, Lindos, Lardos and Kalathos.

Crowds gathered in streets under an orange sky while smoke hung in the air.

In Lindos, famed for an acropolis on a massive rock within medieval walls, a blaze charred the hillside and buildings.

Thanasis Virinis, a vice mayor of Rhodes, told Mega television on Sunday that between 4,000 and 5,000 people were in temporary accommodation, calling for donations of essentials such as mattresses and bedclothes.

Among the nationalities of tourists affected on Rhodes were French, Dutch and Germans, as well as Britons.

One hotelier said the island can receive 150,000 visitors at a time in peak season. The resident population of the island is around 125,000.

Read more:
Fleeing fires ‘like the end of the world’
Evacuee ‘lost everything’
British family spent night on floor

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Flights from Rhodes land in Manchester

Tourists evacuate from Rhodes
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Tourists evacuate from Rhodes

Foreign Office Rapid Deployment Team sent to the island

As crowds filled Rhodes airport, the Greek foreign ministry said it was setting up a helpdesk for people who had lost travel documents.

Tour operator Jet2 said five planes due to take more tourists to the island would instead fly empty and take people home on their scheduled flights.

Air France-KLM said its daily flight from Rhodes was operating as normal.

Ryanair said its flights to and from the island were unaffected by the fire.

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Locals in Rhodes have seen their homes destroyed by wildfires

TUI said it cancelled all outbound flights to Rhodes up to and including Tuesday. “Customers currently in Rhodes will return on their intended flight home,” it said in a statement.

More than 250 firefighters, assisted by 18 aircraft, set up firebreaks to shield a dense forest and more residential areas.

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A UK government spokesperson said: “We are actively monitoring the fires in Rhodes and are in close contact with local authorities.

“The FCDO has deployed a Rapid Deployment Team (RDT) of five FCDO staff and four British Red Cross responders to Rhodes to support British Nationals, whose safety is our top priority.

“They will be based at Rhodes International Airport to assist with travel documents and liaise with Greek authorities and travel operators on the ground.

“British nationals in Rhodes should contact their travel operator in the first instance for any queries regarding the rescheduling of flights and continue to check our updated gov.uk travel advice for information.”

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Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after ‘prolific’ rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

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Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after 'prolific' rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

Another 23 female potential victims have reported that they may have been raped by Zhenhao Zou – the Chinese PhD student detectives believe may be one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.

The Metropolitan Police launched an international appeal after Zou, 28, was convicted of drugging and raping 10 women following a trial at the Inner London Crown Court last month.

Detectives have not confirmed whether the 23 people who have come forward add to their estimates that more than 50 other women worldwide may have been targeted by the University College London student.

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth said: “We have victims reaching out to us from different parts of the globe.

“At the moment, the primary places where we believe offending may have occurred at this time appears to be both in England, here in London, and over in China.”

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth
Image:
Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth

Zou lived in a student flat in Woburn Place, near Russell Square in central London, and later in a flat in the Uncle building in Churchyard Row in Elephant and Castle, south London.

Read more: How a student described as ‘smart and charming’ was unmasked as a prolific sexual predator

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He had also been a student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied mechanical engineering from 2017 until 2019. Police say they have not had any reports from Belfast but added they were “open-minded about that”.

“Given how active and prolific Zou appears to have been with his awful offending, there is every prospect that he could have offended anywhere in the world,” Mr Southworth said.

“We wouldn’t want anyone to write off the fact they may have been a victim of his behaviour simply by virtue of the fact that you are from a certain place.

“The bottom line is, if you think you may have been affected by Zhenhao Zou or someone you know may have been, please don’t hold back. Please make contact with us.”

***ONLY USE IF HE IS CONVICTED OF AT LEAST TWO RAPES***It is feared Zou may have carried out dozens more sex crimes. Pic: Met Police
Image:
Pic: Met Police

Zou used hidden or handheld cameras to record his attacks, and kept the footage and often the women’s belongings as souvenirs.

He targeted young, Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study, before drugging and assaulting them.

Zou was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim, as well as three counts of voyeurism, 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of false imprisonment and three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol.

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Moment police arrest rapist student

Mr Southworth said: “Of those 10 victims, several were not identified so as we could be sure exactly where in the world they were, but their cases, nevertheless, were sufficient to see convictions at court.

“There were also, at the time, 50 videos that were identified of further potential female victims of Zhenhao Zou’s awful crimes.

“We are still working to identify all of those women in those videos.

“We have now, thankfully, had 23 victim survivors come forward through the appeal that we’ve conducted, some of whom may be identical with some of the females that we saw in those videos, some of whom may even turn out to be from the original indicted cases.”

Mr Southworth added: “Ultimately, now it’s the investigation team’s job to professionally pick our way through those individual pieces of evidence, those individual victims’ stories, to see if we can identify who may have been a victim, when and where, so then we can bring Zou to justice for the full extent of his crimes.”

Mr Southworth said more resources will be put into the investigation, and that detectives are looking to understand “what may have happened without wishing to revisit the trauma, but in a way that enables [the potential victims] to give evidence in the best possible way.”

The Metropolitan Police is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force either by emailing survivors@met.police.uk, or via the major incident public portal on the force’s website.

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Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

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Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

An 11-year-old girl who went missing after entering the River Thames has been named as Kaliyah Coa.

An “extensive search” has been carried out after the incident in east London at around 1.30pm on Monday.

Police said the child had been playing during a school inset day and entered the water near Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich.

A recovery mission is now said to be under way to find Kaliyah along the Thames, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out an extensive examination of the area.

Location of Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich, where 11-year-old girl Kaliyah Coa went into the River Thames on 31/03
Image:
Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope in North Woolwich leading into the Thames

Chief Superintendent Dan Card thanked members of the public and emergency teams who responded to “carry out a large-scale search during a highly pressurised and distressing time”.

He also confirmed drone technology and boats were being used to “conduct a thorough search over a wide area”.

He added: “Our specialist officers are supporting Kaliyah’s family through this deeply upsetting time and our thoughts go out to all those impacted by what has happened.”

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“Equally we appreciate this has affected the wider community who have been extremely supportive. You will see extra officers in the area during the coming days.”

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On Monday, Kerry Benadjaoud, a 62-year-old resident from the area, said she heard of the incident from her next-door neighbour, who “was outside doing her garden and there was two little kids running, and they said ‘my friend’s in the water'”.

When she arrived at the scene with a life ring, a man told her he had called the police, “but he said at the time he could see her hands going down”.

Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope that goes directly into the River Thames and is used to transport boats.

Residents pointed out that it appeared to be covered in moss and was slippery.

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Planning reforms to ‘rewire the system’ and get Britain building – all while protecting wildlife

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Planning reforms to 'rewire the system' and get Britain building - all while protecting wildlife

Major developers will only deal with one regulator under planning reforms which ministers say will “rewire the system” to get Britain building – all while protecting the environment. 

A review by former Labour adviser Dan Corry into Britain’s sluggish system of green regulation has concluded that existing environmental regulators should remain in place, while rejecting a “bonfire of regulations”.

But Mr Corry suggested there might be circumstances in which the government look at changing the wildlife and habit rules inherited from the EU, which protect individual species.

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These lie at the centre of the controversy of a £120m bat tunnel – the shed in Aylesbury which protects a rare breed from future high speed trains.

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The government has now explicitly ruled out any such change in this parliament.

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Campaigners have questioned whether the changes go far enough and will make a major difference to the rate and scale of building in the UK.

Speaking to Sky News, Environment Secretary Steve Reed insisted that accepting nine of the recommendations from the Corry review would amount to wholesale reform.

The minister said: “We can get a win-win for economic growth and for nature. And that is why we are moving ahead with proposals such as appointing a lead regulator for major developments so that the developers don’t have to navigate the architecture of multiple regulators.

“They just work for a single regulator who manages all the others on their behalf. Simplifying the online planning portal.

“These are huge changes that will save developers billions of pounds and speed up decisions doing damage to the environment.”

Mr Reed insisted that there would be “no more bat tunnels” built, even though the Corry review suggests that more work needs to be done to look again at the relevant guidance.

It says: “Rapidly reviewing the existing catalogue of compliance guidance, including on protecting bats, will identify opportunities to remove duplication, ambiguity or inconsistency.

“Natural England has already agreed to review and update their advice to Local Planning Authorities on bats to ensure there is clear, proportionate and accessible advice available.”

The review will mean:

• Appointing one lead regulator for every major infrastructure project, like Heathrow expansion

• A review on how nature rules are implemented – but not the rules themselves

• Insisting regulators focus more on government priorities, particularly growth

Economist and former charity leader Mr Corry, who led the review, said it shows that “simply scrapping regulations isn’t the answer”.

“Instead we need modern, streamlined regulation that is easier for everyone to use. While short-term trade-offs may be needed, these reforms will ultimately deliver a win-win for both nature and economic growth in the longer run.”

However, Sam Richards from Britain Remade, a thinktank trying to get Britain growing, said that while the steps are welcome, the number of regulators that report to the environment department would remain the same before and after the review. He questioned whether this would have the impact ministers claimed.

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