Combined international effort halts spread of wildfires across Greece

A firefighter from Slovakia tries to extinguish a fire on the island of Evia (Petros Karadjias/AP)

Hundreds of firefighters from across Europe and the Middle East worked alongside Greek colleagues in rugged terrain on Wednesday to contain flare-ups of the huge wildfires that ravaged Greece’s forests for a week, destroying homes and forcing evacuations.

The spread of the blazes has been largely halted, officials said, but fronts still burned on the large island of Evia and in Greece’s southern Peloponnese region.