Holiday nightmare in blaze-hit Rhodes

A GROUP of Omagh girls were among thousands to be evacuated from the Greek island of  Rhodes after devastating wildfires began to take hold.

Four friends, Tara McDonagh, Abby Crawford, Holly Mills and Caitlin Houston, had been enjoying their dream "Mamma Mia" holiday in Lindos, a small village in Rhodes - but this soon turned into a nightmare after major wildfires had broken out near their resort, and they were told they would soon be evacuated.

The local girls were just four of the estimated 19,000 people who have so far been evacuated from the islands of Rhodes, in what has been described by the Greek authorities as "the largest evacuation from a wildfire in the country".

What followed was a tumultuous couple of days for the Tyrone group, who found themselves sleeping rough in a school-turned evacuation centre, while battling to secure transport to a nearby airport to flee the country.

Tara told the Tyrone Constitution: "When we first heard about the wildfires and rumblings about evacuations in far away towns, we were under the impression that it would never happen to us, and that nothing like that could spoil our holiday.

"However, the next day we started getting evacuation notices for villages much closer to us, we began to get worried.