Six foreign tourists died and at least 30 people were injured as the freak weather hit Halkidiki in northern Greece, reported Charalambos Stériadis, head of Civil Protection in northern Greece, to AFP.
The police initially reported five deaths.
According to witnesses interviewed by Greek television network ERT, the tornado lasted around 20 minutes.
Police reported a Russian tourist and his two year old son were killed when a fallen tree hit a hotel in the seaside resort of Kassandra, some 70km from Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city.
In the nearby town of Propontida, a Czech couple died when their caravan was rocked by violent gusts of wind, and a Romanian woman and her child were fatally injured when a building roof was torn away, according to the same police source.
Stériadis said the area of Halkidiki had declared a state of emergency, describing the strong winds and hailstorms as an unprecedented phenomenon.
Port police officers advised a fisherman in his sixties had been reported missing, while dozens of patients with minor injuries had been transferred to hospitals, according to Civil Protection.
Images broadcast by ERT show overturned vehicles, fallen trees, missing rooftops and mudslides.
At least 140 fire fighters participated in rescue operations, said Vassilis Varthakoyannis, the fire service spokesman.
The citizen protection minister, Michalis Chryssohoidis, left Athens on Wednesday evening to visit the area, as well as a number of representatives of Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ new government, which was voted in during Sunday’s parliamentary elections, said Stériadis.
Prior to the tornado, Greece had been affected by high temperatures of 37 degrees Celsius over the last two days.
