Dog discovered cowering in oven amid devastation left by Greece wildfire

'He just looked like a burnt shaggy rug'

A dog managed to escape the deadly wildfires in Greece by hiding in an outside oven as blazes devastated the tourist town of Mati.

The terrified white poodle-cross was found looking like a "burnt shaggy rug" by an animal rescue volunteer as she scoured the resort last week.

The blaze on 23 July left at least 91 people dead and is thought to have killed hundreds of pets and strays as it swept through the seaside town.

Footage captured the moment Artemis Kyriakopoulou came across the four-year-old dog, who was singed yellow from the smoke and flames and had difficulty breathing.

"Even its eyelashes are burnt, I wonder how this dog survived," said Diana Topali, 42, who is fostering the animal, which was named Loukoumakis by a vet.​

He had crawled into a brick-built hollow behind a garden barbecue area as the inferno raged around him in the town east of Athens last week, an incident that developed into one of Greece's worst natural disasters.

Ms Kyriakopoulou was searching with others when she came across Loukoumakis as she tried to gain access to another garden. She lured him out with a tin of dog food.

"I saw there was something like an (outdoors) oven, and I figured if anything were alive, it would be in there," Ms Kyriakopoulou, 21, told Reuters Television.

"He just looked like a burnt shaggy rug," Ms Topali said.

Loukoumakis has been groomed, is on antibiotics and is slowly recovering. He will stay with Ms Topali until he finds a permanent home.

Additional reporting by Reuters.