Turkey faces a 'very risky week' for wildfires as flames also scorch parts of southeast Europe

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey faced a “very risky week” for wildfires, an official said Monday, as blazes across parts of southeast Europe and the Balkans damaged homes and led to a huge firefighting operation that included evacuations. Nearly 100 people face prosecution over the fires in Turkey.

Blazes erupted near Bursa, Turkey’s fourth-largest city, over the weekend.

A wildfire to the northeast of Bursa had been largely extinguished, but one to the south of the city continued, although its intensity had been “significantly reduced,” Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli told reporters in Ankara.

He also said that a fire that has been burning for six days in Karabuk, in northwest Turkey, had also “been reduced in intensity,” and a blaze in Karamanmaras in the south had largely been brought under control.

A wildfire also erupted Monday in forests outside the western port city of Izmir, where 11 aircraft were helping ground-based fire units and residents battle the blaze.

“We are in a very risky week," Yumakli said of the wildfires.

In Greece, firefighters raced to tackle a wildfire that broke out Monday near a university campus close to the center of Athens.

Water-dropping planes and helicopters buzzed over the city center as they headed to the wildfire near the National Technical University of Athens, located in foothills ringing the Greek capital.

In all, 11 planes and eight helicopters were reinforcing 110 firefighters on the ground, the fire department said. Police announced road closures in the area, including to the only highway that circles the city.

A waning fire on the island of Kythera, which lies south of the Peloponnese, was reinvigorated by strong winds. Over the weekend, the blaze burned through around 10% of the small island’s land mass, triggering the evacuation of several villages.

A Turkish firefighting team of 22 personnel and five vehicles crossed the northern border Monday to assist Bulgarian crews fight a large fire near the village of Lesovo, which was evacuated.

The blaze was one of hundreds across Bulgaria, the most severe of which was near the southwestern village of Strumyani. The Interior Ministry described the fire as “extremely large” and “widespread,” leading to 200 firefighters being withdrawn because of the effects of high winds on the fire.

Several villages have been extensively damaged, with dozens of homes burned to the ground. By Monday, 269 fires had been extinguished in the previous 24 hours, the government said.

Other European Union countries have responded to Bulgaria’s requests for help, sending firefighting helicopters and planes.

In several instances, the cause of fires have been determined to be carelessness by people, such as open fires and discarded cigarettes.

Senior Interior Ministry official Miroslav Rashkov said that two people had been arrested for deliberately starting fires and would be prosecuted.

Turkey has been fighting severe wildfires since late June.

In Bursa, three volunteer firefighters were killed after their water tanker overturned, local news agency IHA reported. One died at the scene and the two others were pulled from the tanker and hospitalized but died late Sunday.

The volunteer crew from the province of Bolu was on its way to the village of Aglasan, northeast of Bursa, to combat a blaze when the vehicle fell into a ditch beside a rough forest track, the agency reported.

Separately, officials said earlier Sunday a firefighter died of a heart attack while battling a blaze. The fatalities brought the total deaths over the past month to 17, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed Wednesday in a fire in the western city of Eskisehir.

The huge blazes around Bursa forced more than 3,500 people to flee their homes. While firefighting teams have contained the damage to a limited number of homes across affected areas in Turkey, vast tracts of forest have been turned to ash.

Unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds have been fueling the wildfires. Turkey and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean are experiencing record-breaking heat waves. The government had earlier declared disaster areas in two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik.

Turkey battled at least 44 separate fires Sunday, Yumakli said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that 99 suspects faced prosecution in relation to the wildfires.

In Albania, firefighters battled at least six separate wildfires Monday, the defense ministry said. Two weeks of blazes have ravaged thousands of hectares, or acres, of forest in the Balkan country.

The areas most at risk were in the northeast, where inaccessible mountain plateaus had water-dropping aircraft carrying out the bulk of the firefighting.

In the country’s southern region, overnight winds ignited blazes in the municipalities of Delvine and Konispol and in the Himare district on the Adriatic coast, which suffered wildfires last week.

Authorities said that at least a dozen people were arrested over the weekend over the wildfires.

Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, contributed to this report.

A view shows charred trees and scorched land following a wildfire that swept through the area in Bursa, Turkey, Sunday July 27, 2025. (Sercan Ozkurnazli/DIA Images via AP)

Firefighters work to extinguish a wildfire in Bursa, Turkey, early on Sunday, July 27, 2025. (Sercan Ozkurnazli/DIA Images via AP)

Firefighters work to extinguish a wildfire in Bursa, Turkey, Sunday, July 27, 2025. (Sercan Ozkurnazli/DIA Images via AP)

A firefighter stands among burned trees during a wildfire at the Polytechnic University of Athens as the Greek capital is seen in the background, Monday, July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

A firefighting helicopter drops water to extinguish a fire at the Polytechnic University of Athens as the Greek capital is seen in the background on Monday, July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

A view shows charred trees and scorched land following a wildfire that swept through the area in Bursa, Turkey, Sunday July 27, 2025. (Sercan Ozkurnazli/DIA Images via AP)

Firefighters work to extinguish a wildfire in Bursa, Turkey, early on Sunday, July 27, 2025. (Sercan Ozkurnazli/DIA Images via AP)

Firefighters work to extinguish a wildfire in Bursa, Turkey, Sunday, July 27, 2025. (Sercan Ozkurnazli/DIA Images via AP)

HONG KONG (AP) — Former executives of a now-defunct, pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong who were convicted under a national security law pleaded for lighter sentences Tuesday in a landmark case widely seen as a barometer of media freedom in a city once hailed as a bastion of free press in Asia.

The former journalists pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security. They admitted to the prosecution's charge that said they conspired with their ex-boss and onetime media mogul Jimmy Lai to request foreign sanctions, blockades or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China.

Lai, the Apple Daily founder who pleaded not guilty in the case, was convicted in December. The verdict raised concerns about the city's declining press freedom and drew criticism from foreign governments.

But the government insists the case has nothing to do with media freedom, saying the defendants used news reporting as a pretext for years to commit acts that harmed China and Hong Kong.

Their sentences are expected to be handed down at a later date.

Six Apple Daily executives were convicted in Lai's case: publisher Cheung Kim-hung; associate publisher Chan Pui-man; editor-in-chief Ryan Law; executive editor-in-chief Lam Man-chung; executive editor-in-chief responsible for English news Fung Wai-kong; and editorial writer Yeung Ching-kee. Some of them served as prosecution witnesses during the 156-day trial.

A conviction on the collusion charge carries a sentence ranging from three years to life in prison. But a guilty plea can result in a sentence reduction. Under the security law, a reduced penalty may be granted to those who report on offenses committed by others.

Chan's lawyer, Marco Li, said if the judges decided to place his client in the upper sentencing band, he suggested the starting point should be 10 years, given her limited role. Citing factors including her timely plea and assistance to the prosecution, he asked for her sentence to be halved.

Li said Chan, who started working at Apple Daily in 1996, regretted not resisting even more firmly when matters arose that made her uncomfortable. But according to her mitigation letter, Chan couldn't leave her beloved job casually at that time because she was suffering serious health issues and was under financial burden.

Chung Pui-kuen, Chan's husband and a former top editor of the now-shuttered Stand News, was among those in the public gallery. He was sentenced to 21 months in jail in a separate sedition case.

Lai founded Apple Daily in 1995, two years before Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to Chinese rule. It attracted a strong following with its sometimes sensational reports, investigative scoops and eventual short animated video reports. Being openly critical of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, the newspaper was well-received among pro-democracy readers.

During Hong Kong's massive anti-government protests in 2019, Apple Daily ran articles sympathetic to protesters and supportive of the pro-democracy movement that saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets.

After Beijing imposed the security law to quell the protests, Lai was one of the first prominent figures to be arrested. Within a year, Apple Daily's former executives also were arrested. The prosecutions, asset freeze and police raids forced the newspaper's closure in June 2021. Its final edition sold a million copies.

In their December verdict, the three government-appointed judges said Lai had used Apple Daily as a platform for spreading his political ideas and implementing his political agenda before and after the introduction of the security law.

The judges on Monday heard arguments about the sentencing of Lai, Cheung and two other non-Apple Daily activists involved in the former publisher’s case.

When Lai entered the courtroom Tuesday, he smiled at people sitting in the public gallery as a supporter formed a heart shape with her hands.

FILE - In this June 23, 2021, file photo, Lam Man-chung, left, executive editor-in-Chief of Apple Daily and Chan Pui-man, center, associate publisher of Apple Daily gesture at the headquarters before the newspaper stop publishing in Hong Kong. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

FILE - Chan Pui-man, associate publisher of Apple Daily newspaper walks out from a court in Hong Kong, June 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung), File)