Wind-whipped flames consumed villages and parched forests yesterday, bearing down on the site of the ancient Olympics as massive forest fires that have killed 52 people raged across Greece, where the government declared a state of emergency.

Most of the country's southern Peloponnese region was burning for a third day, and people fled in panic from villages just a few kilometers from Ancient Olympia.

A series of new fires broke out yesterday in central Greece's region of Fthiotida - one of the few areas that had not been affected by what has become the country's worst wildfire disaster, fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis said.

Although a temporary drop in the ferocity of high winds early in the morning provided brief respite, they intensified later in the day.

"Unfortunately the improvement that we were looking for is not there," Diamandis said. "Our target is for the fire not to enter Ancient Olympia, not to destroy antiquities."

He said three firefighting planes and two helicopters were focusing their efforts on the area, although one helicopter had to be diverted south earlier in the day after authorities received reports of people trapped by flames in a village near the town of Zaharo, where the vast majority of deaths have occurred since Friday.

Culture Minister George Voulgarakis was heading to the ancient site to coordinate efforts to save the antiquities, the ministry said.

"There is a huge mobilization in the area of Ancient Olympia," the ministry said in a statement. "All means are being used, and all necessary measures have been taken."

The army was called in to create a fire break, and the site's automatic sprinkling system had been activated, it said.

Before dawn, church bells rang out in the village of Kolyri near Ancient Olympia as residents gathered their belongings and fled. Villagers returned to find at least seven houses gutted.

Six firefighting planes were dropping water in the area.

The fire blazed into the nearby village of Varvasaina, destroying several houses. As residents rushed to battle the flames, others, stunned, walked the streets holding their heads in their hands.

Across the country, churchgoers prayed for the blazes to abate.

"Fires are burning in more than half the country," Diamandis said. "This is definitely an unprecedented disaster for Greece."

The worst blazes - 42 major fronts - were concentrated in the southern mountains of the Peloponnese and on the island of Evia, north of Athens. Arson has been blamed in several cases, and seven people have been detained on suspicion of causing fires.

The blaze had abated yesterday in Kalyvia, an area between Athens and the ancient site of Sounion to the south, while 42 fires in various parts of the country had been brought under control.

Nearly 1,000 soldiers, backed by military helicopters, reinforced firefighters stretched to the limit by Greece's worst summer of wildfires.

(China Daily via agencies August 27, 2007)