EXHAUSTED Greek firefighters battled around the clock for the fourth day to try and contain massive blazes north of Athens yesterday.

Exhausted Greek firefighters battled around the clock for the fourth day to try and contain massive blazes north of Athens today.

Dozens of wildfires broke out across Greece, torching olive groves, cutting off villages and sending residents fleeing as one of the largest blazes swept perilously close to the capital's northern suburbs.

DEADLY summer wild fires spread across Spain, France, Italy and Greece on Friday with holidaymakers rescued from beaches and thousands of firefighters brought into the battle.

Forest fires continued to burn in parts of southern Greece while the other main fronts of a series of massive fires have been extinguished, Greece’s fire service said today.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso toured fire damaged areas in southern Greece by helicopter today, and promised aid to relieve areas where 64 people died and an estimated 190,000 hectares (469,000 acres) of forest and farmland were destroyed.

Promises of aid poured in from Greece and abroad as firefighters managed to douse most of the massive fires that ravaged the Greek countryside for a week and killed 64 people.

All major blazes in Greece were under control today, and firefighters were working to extinguish smaller fires in the southern part of the country.

Greece’s fire department said all major blazes were “generally receding,” but authorities remained on high alert for possible rekindling of the massive fires that have killed at least 64 people before a new heat wave forecast for the weekend.

Winds relented throughout fire-ravaged Greece today, enabling thousands of firefighters to tame a rash of massive fires that killed at least 64 people and obliterated record swaths of field and forests in six days.

Greece’s president today described the fires ravaging his country’s forests as a national catastrophe, as thousands of firefighters – hundreds of them brought in from other countries – fought to control blazes that have burned nearly 500,000 acres.

Foreign firefighters and aircraft joined the battle today against blazes in southern Greece that have killed 64 people.

A fire broke out on the fringes of Athens today, burning down a slope of Mount Ymittos and bearing down on a suburb of the Greek capital as wildfires which have killed at least 61 people ravaged vast areas of the country.

Firefighters backed by aircraft prevented the birthplace of the ancient Olympics from being consumed by flames as Greece’s worst wildfires in memory blazed across the country and the death toll climbed to 60.

Fires tore through parched forests and swallowed villages across Greece, bearing down on communities near Ancient Olympia in the south today. At least 49 people were dead.

The death toll from forest fires that have raged uncontrolled across vast swathes of southern Greece rose to 37 people, the fire department said today.

Two sailors were killed and five others were missing today after a North Korean flagged cargo ship sank in a storm in the eastern Aegean Sea, authorities said.

OLYMPIC city Athens was jolted by a small earthquake yesterday but there were no reports of any damage.

IRISH sports fans are adding a new event to the Olympic programme — the last minute dash.

Two moderate earthquakes shook parts of eastern Greece today but there were no reports of injury of damage, authorities said.

A half-built aircraft carrier being hauled to China to become a floating casino was left adrift in high gales early today after it broke lose from its tugboats, authorities said.

About 300 illegal immigrants, most of them Iraqi Kurds, were believed to have come ashore on a Greek island today after being smuggled across the Aegean Sea aboard a small cargo ship, the Merchant Marine Ministry said.