Firefighters and planes from across Europe joined the battle yesterday against forest fires which have brought death and destruction across Greece over the course of 48 hours, writes Helena Smithin Mytilini.
They were supported in their desperate efforts by soldiers, police, officials and hundreds of thousands of volunteers.
Italy, France, Germany, Norway and Spain despatched aircraft and commandos to a nation which by last night appeared increasingly unable to combat blazes that have claimed at least 58 lives, consumed vast tracts of land and forced thousands of people to flee their homes.
However, authorities succeeded in preventing fire damage to the ancient monument in Olympia, site of the first Olympic Games, as they sought to save another world heritage site - the 5th century BC Theatre of Epidavros - from fires raging in the Peloponnese.
Officials did not rule out the possibility that hundreds of people could be missing, victims of disorganisation and bungled evacuation plans. Since the first fires ignited on Friday the southern peninsula has been hardest hit by flames fanned by high temperatures and gale-force winds.
"The damage is terrible, without precedent. We are doing everything we possibly can to help people, to save lives," said acting interior minister Spyros Flogaitis.
Over the weekend television channels depicted harrowing scenes of cars in which people had been burned alive as they belatedly tried to flee the flames.
On Saturday police said that they had found the bodies of a mother and her four children who were incinerated when their home near Zacharo in the Peloponnese was engulfed by flames. Despite the mass evacuation of villages, hamlets, hotels and resorts - thousands of tourists have been forced to camp on beaches - officials said that the elderly and infirm were often refusing to leave their homes.
"There are death notices everywhere," one local resident said. "Everyone knows someone who has lost a person to the fires."
Speaking on state-run radio, a senior official in Olympia said people were panic-stricken and did not know whether they should leave or join efforts to fight fires which were advancing on the town.
"Several villages have already been reduced to cinders and the fire is coming down the mountain very fast," the official said.
As the fires worsened over the weekend the government ordered in the military. The tardy intervention of the army added to widespread condemnation of the government's handling of the catastrophe. Many criticised prime minister Costas Karamanlis, who this month called a snap election for September 16th, of failing to do enough to prevent the outbreak of the 3,000 forest fires which have destroyed large parts of Greece. - (Guardian Service)