The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Athens

Hundreds of firefighters batled Sunday raging forest fires in southern Greece that have killed at least 49 people and forced the government to declare a state of emergency.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said in a message to the nation on Saturday that action was being taken "to mobilise all means and all forces" to put out the worst fires in a decade and help those affected, mostly on the Peloponnese peninsula.

"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 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.