The fire department said a man in his 50s was found trapped under a car in Nea Makri, northeast of Athens, amid severe weather conditions. Emergency services reported nearly 500 calls across the greater Athens area, including more than 30 rescue operations.

Authorities issued emergency alerts and closed schools in Athens and other regions as the storm intensified. Ferry services, a key transport link for Greece’s islands, remained suspended in many areas due to rough seas.

The national weather service warned of continued severe conditions, forecasting intense rainfall, thunderstorms and possible hail across much of the country.

Localized flooding has already been reported in several areas.On Wednesday, flights to Crete were disrupted after an African dust storm reduced visibility, forcing some aircraft to reroute.

Officials said the storm system, which has affected large parts of the country for three days, is expected to ease by Friday.

The planned aid comes as households face mounting pressure from higher fuel and electricity prices driven by geopolitical tensions affecting global energy markets.

Earlier this month, the government introduced a three-month cap on profit margins for fuel retailers and a range of supermarket goods in an effort to curb profiteering and contain inflationary pressures.

The measures target both energy-linked products and essential consumer items, reflecting concerns that supply disruptions tied to the conflict could feed through into broader price increases.

Greece, like many energy-importing economies, remains exposed to volatility in international fuel markets.

The government’s intervention signals an effort to balance market stability with consumer protection as the conflict’s economic impact deepens.Further details of the aid package were not immediately disclosed.

Turkey and Greece agreed during a landmark visit by Erdogan on Thursday to establish a roadmap designed to usher in a new era of closer relations.

Speaking to reporters on his flight back from Greece, where he met Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and several ministers, Erdogan said the meetings were held in a “very positive” atmosphere.

“We are trying to expand, develop this cooperation not just to energy, but all areas including nuclear energy. For example, we may provide an opportunity to Greece from the nuclear power plant we will build in Sinop,” Erdogan said, without elaborating, according to his office.

He said Mitsotakis was “warm” to the idea.

Ankara and Athens have long been at loggerheads over issues including where their continental shelves start and end, energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean, flights over the Aegean Sea, and the ethnically partitioned island of Cyprus.

The two countries came to the brink of war in the 1990s, and in recent years have repeatedly argued about such issues.

Asked about resolving outstanding maritime disputes with Greece, Erdogan said Turkey’s stance on protecting its rights in the region had not changed, but that a fair sharing of energy resources was possible.

“A comprehensive and fair sharing in the eastern Mediterranean is possible. So long as we build the basis to make this happen, form correct roadmaps, and don’t give provocations an opportunity,” he said, adding a regional conference of littoral states that Ankara is proposing would be a “correct step” in forming this basis.

In a landmark visit of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to Greece, the long-time sparring partners agreed to focus on pursuing good neighbourly relations, keep open channels of communication, boost trade volumes and work on issues which have kept them apart, notably in the Aegean Sea.

“There is no issue between us that is unsolvable. So long as we focus on the big picture and don’t end up being like those who cross the sea and drown in the river,” Erdogan said after a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens. The meeting went on longer than expected.

The NATO allies wanted to raise bilateral trade volume to $10 billion, while Erdogan said both countries could benefit from high-level meetings held annually.

“Geography and history has dictated that we live in the same neighbourhood.. But I feel a historical responsibility to utilise this opportunity to bring the two states side-by-side, just as our borders are,” Mitsotakis said.

More accustomed to verbal jousting in recent years, chilly relations between the two neighbours thawed markedly after Greece swiftly dispatched aid in the wake of a devastating earthquake in Turkey in February.

Greece and Turkey have been at odds for decades over issues including where their continental shelves start and end, energy resources, overflights of the Aegean Sea, and ethnically-split Cyprus.

They came to the brink of war in the 1990s, and in recent years have argued over energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, defence issues, migration and the acquisition of fighter jets, which interrupted cooperation talks.

But ‘earthquake diplomacy’ – similar to another thaw under similar circumstances in 1999 – has turned the tide, again.

Striking an upbeat tone, Erdogan earlier said the two countries should focus on the positives, and less on the negatives.

“It will be much more beneficial for the future if we look at things from a glass half-full perspective,” Erdogan said during a meeting with Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou earlier.

Greece got permission from the European Union to re-activate a seven-day tourist visa for Turkish visitors for 10 islands close to the Turkish coast.

Both countries want to show they are willing to mend ties.

Turkey has been seeking EU membership for more than two decades. Following a debt crisis that rocked the euro zone, Greece wants to regain its footing and appear as a pillar of stability in a changing geopolitical landscape due to the war in Ukraine and the Gaza conflict.

“There is no problem we cannot solve through dialogue on the basis of mutual goodwill,” Erdogan told Kathimerini newspaper in an interview, a day before the two countries’ fifth High-level Cooperation Council (HCC) in Athens.

The neighbours and NATO allies have been at odds for decades over issues including where their continental shelves start and end, energy resources, overflights of the Aegean Sea, and ethnically split Cyprus. They reached the brink of war in the 1990s.

Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis agreed in July to resume talks and confidence-building measures as they hailed a new, “positive climate” in ties after more than a year of tensions over energy resources and defence issues.

Erdogan, who is due to meet Mitsotakis on Thursday, said that Turkey was honestly trying to resolve its differences with Greece and that Greece had realised that Turkey would never reject an extended hand of friendship.

“I will tell him, Kyriakos, my friend, we don’t threaten you if you don’t threaten us,” Erdogan told Kathimerini, adding that Athens and Ankara could solve their problems without foreign intervention.

He said cooperation could be enhanced in sectors including the economy, transport, energy and migration, where Turkey needed the support of the European Union, and that the renewed electoral mandate both leaders received this year could help the two countries make constructive progress.

According to Pakistani media, which Directus cited: “The Greek embassy in Islamabad has thus far revoked the visas of hundreds of underprivileged Pakistanis. These Pakistanis spend 2 to 5 million rupees to obtain visas for Greece. A visa that is issued by Greece is revoked by the Greek Embassy. The innocent poor who pay money to first obtain a work permit are being treated very unfairly. And visas are revoked by the Greek embassy in Islamabad.

According to Urdu Media Greece, hundreds of Pakistani families have made calls and left messages after having their visa applications denied, wasting their money as well.

“We urge the governments of Pakistan and Greece to treat this matter seriously. Why do they misuse Pakistanis’ hard-earned money? Greece’s Urdu Media enquired.

There are hundreds more Pakistanis who enter the country and Europe illegally, but here is the tale of two who tried to enter Greece officially.

Husnain Shah, a Pakistani smuggler who has been in the business for more than ten years, disputes that he had a significant hand in the shipwreck off the Greek coast that claimed almost 300 Pakistani lives.

People visit our homes and ask us to put them in touch with someone who can take their brothers and sons abroad since there is so much unemployment here, he told the BBC.

Husnain estimates that during his years of operation, he has abducted thousands of people.

Because there was no other business, I started this. I don’t play a major part; the big and wealthy people in Libya are the ones who receive the majority of the funds—not even a tenth of it.

Many people in this country are considering moving abroad because even a modest wage will likely be higher than what they can make if they stay, given the fragile state of the economy, the nearly 40% inflation rate, and the falling value of the Pakistani rupee.

At the conclusion of the previous year, a poll indicated that 62% of boys and young men between the ages of 15 and 24 desired to leave. Some people may attempt to go lawfully, while others will seek out alternate unlawful methods.

European Union foreign ministers said on July 20 they were ready to re-engage with Turkey, but stopped short of offering Ankara a clear resumption of membership talks.

Turkey has been a candidate for EU membership for more than two decades, but talks stalled in 2016 over the bloc’s concerns over the rule of law and human rights in the country.

The division of Cyprus between its Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations, a source of friction between Greece and Turkey, has also been an impediment.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, whose countries are both EU members, said they welcomed a Turkey-EU re-engagement but that it had to be “gradual”, and, if necessary, “reversible”.

“Those two words should guide us. We can be optimistic, but we are not naive,” Mitsotakis told reporters after meeting Christodoulides in Nicosia, Cyprus’s ethnically-split capital.

The two terms have been built into European terminology over Turkey for some years, reflecting in part the long and convulsed journey of the country in attempting to join the bloc.

Christodoulides said launching a positive agenda with Turkey also implied “positive moves” on Ankara’s part over Cyprus.

“It’s important that our EU partners are also taking the same view,” Christodoulides said.

Cyprus was divided after a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a Greek Cypriot coup engineered by the military junta then ruling Greece. It is represented in the EU by an internationally-recognised Greek Cypriot government.

On-off peace negotiations in the past focussed on uniting the island under a two-zone federal umbrella endorsed by the United Nations. In recent years the Turkish Cypriot side has advocated a two-state settlement, rejected by Greek Cypriots.

“Any partitionist thoughts of two states is completely off any agenda of discussion, and I want to be very clear on that,” Mitsotakis said.

As recently as last Friday, Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar said a resumption of peace talks on Cyprus would be possible only if the Greek Cypriots accepted sovereign equality.

Athens (Reuters) – Greece and Turkey agreed on Wednesday to resume talks and confidence-building measures as they hailed a new “positive climate” in ties after more than a year of tensions between the historic foes.

The two North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have been at odds for decades over a range of issues including where their continental shelves start and end, energy resources, overflights of the Aegean Sea, and ethnically split Cyprus.

Last year, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan halted bilateral talks in a dispute over airspace violations and after accusing Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of pressuring the United States to block the sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

Relations improved when Greece became one of the first countries to send rescue workers to help pull survivors from the rubble after a devastating earthquake hit Turkey in February.

Erdogan and Mitsotakis, both recently re-elected, met on the sidelines of a NATO Summit in Vilnius on Wednesday in their first meeting since March last year.

“It is to the benefit of both countries that the positive climate formed in bilateral relations over recent months has continuity and consistency,” the two leaders’ offices said in identical but separate statements.

“The two sides agreed to build on the positive momentum and activate multiple channels of communication between the two countries in the coming period,” they said, adding that the two leaders look forward to “more frequent contact at all levels.”

They also agreed that the next meeting of a High-Level Cooperation Council, a mechanism the two countries set up in 2010 for their rapprochement, will be held in the northern Greek city of Thessalonki in the autumn.

“We are cautiously optimistic we can turn a new page,” Mitsotakis told reporters after the summit.

Matloob, 43, is among hundreds of migrants from Pakistan, Syria and Egypt who are presumed dead after their overcrowded fishing trawler, that set sail from Libya for Italy, sank off the coast of Pylos in international waters on June 14.

A total of 104 men were rescued and 82 bodies were found. But with survivor accounts suggesting as many as 750 people were on board, several families are calling on authorities to raise the wreck from the seabed and recover the bodies of scores believed to have been trapped in the hold.

“They must take out the people who are inside. If they are dead, take them out,” Adil Hussain said, urging Greece to hire a vessel to recover them.

“We will sell our houses, we will borrow money, if the state can’t. Just give me the body.”

Greek government officials said last month that the chances of retrieving the vessel were slim due to the depth – around 5,000 metres – to which it sank.

Hussain said his brother was crammed with others below deck in the boat’s refrigerator, according to a survivor who recognised him.

“All of us – my mother, my father, my brother’s wife – we want to know, is he dead or alive? If we don’t find his body, we’ll leave the door open for the rest of our lives,” he said through tears.

“I will wait in Greece for my brother.”

Hussain has worked as a gardener in the country since 2007 after a perilous journey of his own via Turkey.

Lawyers representing families of the missing plan on Thursday to ask judicial authorities investigating the case for the boat to be retrieved.

“It is a fundamental obligation towards the victims who are at the bottom of the sea, an obligation towards their families, and of the families towards their loved ones,” Takis Zotos, a lawyer representing four Pakistani families, told Reuters.

Lamenting a lack of interest in the wreck compared to the expensive rescue operation launched for the missing Titanic submersible and its billionaire passengers that drew huge global attention, Zotos said the contrast was “grotesque.”

“If we compare people as units, we are talking about five compared to 600,” he said.

“But they are the wretched of the earth down there. They also had the misfortune of being shipwrecked in the deepest part of the Mediterranean.”

Debris from the Titanic submersible was found by a robotic deep-sea diving vehicle that was sent to scour the Atlantic ocean floor more than 3,000 metres below the surface. Last week presumed human remains were found and recovered from the ocean bottom.

Wait For Identification

Matloob was the first of the two brothers to migrate to Greece in 2005 but after living undocumented for years, he returned to Pakistan two years ago. He struggled to get by and decided to leave again, this time for Italy, borrowing $7,000 from friends to pay for the trip.

Hussain urges his family not to come illegally, even when they tell him they have no food or work in Pakistan.

“I say it’s better – you’re alive. If you come this way, you will die. And if you die, everyone dies.”

So far, around 350 DNA samples have been collected from relatives in Greece or sent from abroad, most from Pakistan, a senior official involved in the process told Reuters.

Just over 20 bodies out of 82 have been identified so far, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the investigation is confidential under Greek law.

The Greek government was not immediately available for comment on the progress of the identification process.

The causes of the shipwreck are still being investigated. Survivors have said that the ship capsized after a disastrous towing attempt by the Greek coast guard, which Greece denies.

Three weeks since the boat sank, the search operation is now being conducted mainly by commercial vessels asked by Greek authorities to monitor the area, a coast guard official said.

The bodies of the victims remain in refrigerators, the chief coroner told Reuters. Hussain is still waiting to hear if his DNA is a match.

Alam Shinwari, an official at Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) said Pakistan last week sent to Greece over 200 DNA samples from family members and more would be collected. Pakistan has also sent fingerprints.

A spokeswoman for Pakistan’s Foreign Office, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, said bodies would be transported to Pakistan upon verification and release by the Greek authorities.

Muhammad Ayub, 55, whose brother Muhammad Yasin, 28, was on the vessel, said he was hoping his brother’s body would be identified after his two young children gave DNA.

“At least we may know his fate or get his body back, so we can tell these kids that your father was in an accident, this is his grave,” he said.

Mitsotakis was sworn in for a second term as prime minister on Monday following a resounding election win.

Ergodan, who was elected to his third term last month, congratulated Mitsotakis in a phone call, the Turkish Presidency said on Monday.

He said the two re-elected governments create an opportunity for bilateral relations between the neighbouring countries.

Greece and Turkey, both NATO allies but historic foes, have been at odds for decades over a range of issues from airspace to maritime zones in the eastern Mediterranean, migration and ethnically split Cyprus.