As summers get hotter, Greece's seasonal firefighters protest for permanent jobs

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Seasonal firefighters clashed with police in Greece’s Civil Protection Ministry during a protest Thursday to demand permanent positions after their contracts expire following a grueling wildfire season.

Riot police used tear gas to force a group of protesters out of the ministry building in the evening, after they staged an hours-long sit-in protest and refused to leave. One seasonal firefighter and one police officer were injured in the clashes.

Earlier, hundreds of protesters joined in a demonstration outside the ministry, many wearing their tan and red uniforms. They blew whistles and aerosol horns while carrying Greek flags. The protesters represent some 2,500 firefighters whose short-term contracts ended Thursday, leaving them unemployed with the opportunity to be re-hired next May.

Union representatives argue that climate change has extended Greece’s fire risk beyond the traditional summer months, requiring a year-round firefighting capability. The 2023 fire season saw an estimated 1,747 sq. kilometers (675 sq. miles) burned — more than four times the annual average of the past decade, according to the European Union’s wildfire monitoring service.

The damage so far this year is estimated at 410 sq. kilometers (158 sq. miles) and includes a major fire that reached the outskirts of Athens.

Evangelos Tsoukalas, head of the Seasonal Firefighters’ Association of Greece, told the Associated Press that many of its members with six or more years of experience had been barred from applying for positions in special firefighting units opened this year, because the age limit was set at 35.

“There is an age cut-off (for those positions). And now our contracts are up, so we are being thrown out as seasonal firefighters,” Tsoukalas said.

While seasonal firefighters typically serve from May through October, union officials argue their experience is invaluable, particularly given Greece’s increasingly severe fire seasons.

There was no immediate response from the government to the demand for year-round employment. Greece is grappling with adapting its firefighting capabilities to meet the challenges of longer, more intense fire seasons.

Police hold a seasonal firefighter outside Greece's Civil Protection Ministry during a protest to demand permanent positions as their contracts expire following a grueling wildfire season, in Athens Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (John Liakos/InTime News via AP)

Seasonal firefighters clash with riot police inside Greece's Civil Protection Ministry during a protest to demand permanent positions as their contracts expire following a grueling wildfire season, in Athens, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (John Liakos/InTime News via AP)

Riot police clash with seasonal firefighters inside Greece's Civil Protection Ministry during a protest to demand permanent positions as their contracts expire following a grueling wildfire season, in Athens, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (Michalis Karayannis/Eurokinissi via AP)

Hundreds of seasonal firefighters attend a protest outside Greece's Civil Protection Ministry to demand year-round contracts, in Athens, Thursday Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Hundreds of seasonal firefighters attend a protest outside Greece's Civil Protection Ministry to demand year-round contracts, in Athens, Thursday Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Hundreds of seasonal firefighters attend a protest outside Greece's Civil Protection Ministry to demand year-round contracts, in Athens, Thursday Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Hundreds of seasonal firefighters attend a protest outside Greece's Civil Protection Ministry to demand year-round contracts, in Athens, Thursday Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Rocket barrages from Lebanon into northern Israel killed four foreign workers and three Israelis on Thursday, Israeli medics said, the deadliest cross-border strikes in Israel since it invaded Lebanon. Israel kept up airstrikes it says targeted Hezbollah militants across Lebanon, where health authorities on Thursday reported 24 people killed.

U.S. diplomats were in the region pushing for cease-fires in both Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East as the Biden administration enters its final months. Pressure has been building ahead of the U.S. election next week.

In northern Gaza, Israeli forces struck one of the last functioning hospitals, according to the World Heath Organization said, destroying much-needed supplies that the U.N. agency had delivered to the facility. The strikes set off a fire that affected the dialysis unit, destroyed water tanks, damaged the surgery building and injured four medics trying to extinguish the blaze, said the hospital's director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment about a strike on the hospital, which it stormed last week after alleging it was harboring Hamas militants. Gaza's Health Ministry on Thursday condemned Israeli attacks on the hospital and called on the international community to safeguard medical facilities in Gaza.

Projectiles from Lebanon crashed into an agricultural area in Metula, Israel’s northernmost town, killing four foreign workers and an Israeli farmer, local officials said Thursday.

Hours later, the Israeli military reported another volley of some 25 rockets from Lebanon, striking an olive grove in a suburb of the northern Israeli port city of Haifa. That strike killed a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman while wounding two others, said Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran, Israel’s regional adversary. Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for Thursday’s rocket fire. Israel’s military said 90 projectiles were fired from Lebanon on Thursday.

Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel —and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes — over the past year since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered Israel’s devastating war in the Palestinian enclave.

The residents of Metula evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain. The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli organization that advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger by allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.

Agricultural areas near Israel’s border are closed military zones that can only be entered with official permission. For the few remaining residents, the thump of interceptions by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and wailing air raid sirens punctuate daily life.

Nonetheless, local officials largely support continuing a ground operation in southern Lebanon.

“If the Israeli government accedes to an agreement brought by (the Biden administration) ... we will not have it because for us this is rehabilitating Hezbollah again on our borders,” said Eitan Davidi, the mayor of the northern town of Margaliot.

Israeli strikes killed 24 people in Lebanon on Thursday, among them 13 people in the country’s eastern Bekaa Valley, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News agency, a day after the Israel’s military warned residents there to evacuate.

The warnings sent thousands of people fleeing and spread panic across the city, known for its colossal Roman ruins.

The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that over the last 24 hours, Israeli bombardments killed 45 people and wounded 110 in various parts of the country.

Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir al-Ahmar region in the Bekaa Valley, said Israeli airstrikes pummeling the area turned the main highway “a parking lot” of fleeing cars stuck in traffic.

Around 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area, he said, with most taking refuge in private homes. At one of the shelters in Deir al-Ahmar, families with luggage were still arriving Thursday.

“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village near Baalbek. “We came with nothing — no clothes or anything else.”

Senior White House aides Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in Israel Thursday for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials about the conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.

The meetings focused on efforts to secure a cease-fire deal in Lebanon and to assess new proposals floated by mediators to free Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, according to a U.S. official familiar with planning for the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. The meetings were attended by Netanyahu as well as Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister; David Barnea, the director of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency; and other officials.

But with the U.S. election on Tuesday, hopes for immediate progress appeared remote — particularly in Gaza where Israel has come under criticism for not letting more humanitarian aid into the besieged north.

The death toll from more than a year of war in Gaza passed 43,000 earlier this week, Palestinian health officials reported.

The Awda Hospital in central Gaza said late Thursday it had received 16 bodies of people killed by Israeli bombardment of two houses in Nuseirat refugee camp. The hospital said more than 30 others, including a medic and two journalists, were wounded.

Over the past year, the broadening Israeli campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah has killed 2,865 people there, wounded over 13,000 and devastated Lebanese towns near the border.

Some 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced since Israel escalated the conflict into a full-blown war last month, when it launched a wave of heavy airstrikes that killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his deputies.

A year of Hezbollah rocket attacks have also forced 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from near the border.

Frankel reported from Jerusalem and Tawil from Deir al-Ahmar, Lebanon. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Matt Lee in Washington and Eleanor H. Reich in New York contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28, center, Abdulaziz Abu al-Samen, 21, right and Ahmad Fahmawi, 19, in the morgue of a local hospital, as the Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28, take the last look at his body in the morgue of a local hospital, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Displaced people, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, sit at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, study inside at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A displaced woman, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with her family amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, walks at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A displaced woman, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, holds her daughter at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Displaced people, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel, take shelter inside a church sanctuary, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play inside a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A displaced woman, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, changes the diaper of her daughter at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, listen to a story at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, are reflected in a mirror inside a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Rescue workers use excavators to remove the rubble of a destroyed building that was hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Sarafand, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

A civil defence worker searches for victims in the rubble of a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday night, in Sarafand, southern Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Emergency workers carry the body of a victim found in the rubble of a destroyed building hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike in Sarafand, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)