Greece in state of emergency as forest fires kill 49

ATHENS (AFP) - Greece declared a state of emergency Saturday as the number of victims from the country's deadliest forest fires in decades rose to at least 49.

As hundreds of firefighters battled blazes on the Peloponnese peninsula and elsewhere, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said in a message to the nation that the action was being was taken "to mobilise all means and all forces" to put out the fires and help those affected.

"Today is a day of mourning, a national tragedy," Karamanlis said earlier Saturday after a crisis meeting in Sparta city, in the southern Peloponnese.
He pointed the finger at arsonists for starting the fires in areas hit hard by summer droughts and multiple heatwaves, and said his government would "do everything in its power to find and punish those responsible."

Firefighters said that 22 fires had started after nightfall on Friday, which Karamanlis said "could not have been a coincidence." Four people were arrested on Saturday on suspicion of deliberately starting the fires.

Thirty-nine bodies have been recovered since Friday near the village of Zacharo in the Ilia region of the western Peloponnese including those of a mother and her four children aged five to 15.

These included the charred remains of two groups discovered on roads in the mountainous area inhabited mostly by the elderly in winter but a popular family holiday destination in summer.

Four others were found on Saturday near the village of Leondari in the central Peloponnese region of Arcadia.
Six more perished Friday on the Mani peninsula, a tourist haven in the southern Peloponnese, including four holidaymakers and a volunteer fireman from a heart attack.

From midday on Saturday onwards, flames fanned by strong winds began spreading through the region, with evacuations ordered for about 10 areas, firefighters said.

The army and health ministry said that tents, sleeping bags and other supplies were being sent to house those left homeless by the fires, while schools had been commandeered.