Large forest fire blazing near Athens

ATHENS: More than 160 firefighters on Sunday battled to contain a large fire near Athens blazing for a second day amid gale force winds, officials said. And in another emergency, authorities evacuated dozens of people from two villages and a hotel on the island of Zakynthos after a new fire broke out on Sunday. The fire department said the blaze near Athens burned in the mountains above Loutraki, a coastal resort some 60 kilometres (35 miles) west of Athens. “The fire is burning near the top of the mountain,” Stefanos Kolokouris, the fire department´s deputy chief of operations, told state TV ERT.