A man looks at the flames as a wildfire burns in the town of Rafina, near Athens, Greece, July 23, 2018. REUTERS/Costas Baltas

MATI (Reuters) - Greece’s Red Cross organization said on Tuesday the bodies of around 26 victims of a devastating forest fire east of Athens had been discovered, substantially raising a death toll from an inferno which ravaged the area on Monday evening.

“Unfortunately we found 26 charred bodies, between two homes,” Nikos Economopoulos, president of the Greek Red Cross, told Greek state tv.

A Reuters witness earlier said he had seen bodies in the area, and had heard reports of several more casualties - meters away from a beach where hundreds had fled to save themselves. The official count from the blaze in the community of Mati, before the morning discovery, was 24.