Schools shut on Greek islands after heavy rainstorms flood roads

ATHENS -Schools and kindergartens were closed on several Greek islands including Paros and Mykonos on Tuesday after severe weather brought torrential rain, flooding and hailstorms to the Aegean Sea.

Authorities in Paros were struggling to remove vehicles stranded by the muddy waters after torrential rain swept through the island, a popular tourist spot in the summer, late on Monday. 

"Roads have been damaged and we need help with more machines so that we can clear the streets," Paros' mayor Costas Bizas told public broadcaster ERT. "All this catastrophe happened in two hours."

The severe weather continued until the early hours of the morning, blanketing grasslands in nearby Mykonos with white balls of ice and prompting civil protection authorities to order the closure of schools there and on other islands, including Syros, Symi, Kalymnos and Kos.

Greece has been ravaged by floods frequently in recent years, with scientists attributing the extreme weather to warming waters amid rising global temperatures.

A devastating rainstorm, the worst to hit Greece in nearly a century, killed 17 people and caused extensive damage across the central agricultural region of Thessaly in 2023.  

(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Kate Mayberry)