A Canadian-made plane fighting wildfires in Greece crashed today, Tuesday, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned of difficult days ahead, as the fires destroyed homes and forced the evacuation of thousands of tourists from Rhodes Island.

The state broadcaster (ERT) showed footage of the plane dropping water over the fire before crashing into the slope of a hill and catching fire.

The Greek Air Force stated that there were two pilots on board the Canadair CL-215 amphibious aircraft when it crashed over Evia Island, east of Athens, confirming that two helicopters rushed to the scene to conduct a search and rescue operation for the pilots, without providing details about their fate.

Hundreds of firefighters, assisted by forces from Turkey and Slovakia, are battling the fires that have erupted on Rhodes Island since last Wednesday and have flared up again in hot and windy conditions, and more emergency flights are scheduled to take vacationers back home.

Mitsotakis said, "The next few days will be difficult, with the possibility of conditions improving after Thursday," adding, "We all stand in facing what the entire planet is experiencing, especially the Mediterranean, which is one of the hotspots for climate change," noting that if there were a magical defense mechanism, "we would have implemented it."

A report published today by scientists stated, "Human-induced climate change played an extremely overwhelming role in the extreme heatwaves that swept North America, Southern Europe, and China this month."

In Greece, the public prosecutor in Rhodes has opened an investigation into the causes of the fires and the preparedness and response of the authorities, confirming that about 10% of the island's area has burned.

Leftires Laoudikos, whose family owns a small hotel in the coastal resort of Kiotari, one of the fire hotspots earlier this week, said that his 200 guests, most of whom are from Germany, Britain, and Poland, fled in rental cars.

Rhodes, one of Greece's largest islands, is among its top summer destinations, attracting about 1.5 million foreign tourists during the summer months.

About 20,000 people were forced to leave their homes and hotels in Rhodes over the weekend as the blaze spread and reached coastal resorts on the southeastern side of the island, scorching land, killing animals, and damaging buildings.

After a fire in the coastal town of Mati, east of Athens, in 2018 that killed 104 people, Greece adopted a more proactive approach to evacuations, but critics say it has not improved its capacity to extinguish the fires that are common in the summer, even though they are more intense during this year's heatwave.

The mayor of Rhodes stated on Facebook that the island is facing an unprecedented ordeal, as fires also broke out on Corfu Island.

Greece has experienced extremely high temperatures in recent weeks and is expected to rise until Wednesday, exceeding 44 degrees Celsius in some areas.

More than 2,000 vacationers returned home by plane on Monday, and tour operators canceled their upcoming trips, with flights to Rhodes canceled until Friday.

Tourism represents 18% of Greece's economic output, and one in five jobs in Rhodes and many other Greek islands relies heavily on tourism.