The road to doom: mother and four children die in their car as Greece's fires rage on

With a wall of flames bearing down on her holiday home, Athanasia Paraskevopoulou felt she had no choice but to flee.

The 37-year-old bundled her four young children into a car and joined a convoy escaping her mountain village. But the lead vehicle crashed into a fire engine speeding toward the houses they had just left.

With the road blocked and the forest fires closing in, the survivors of the pile-up made for an olive grove. The flames proved too quick however and the escapees all burnt to death.

Twenty-three died, the largest group of victims of the fires that have claimed dozens of lives across Greece.

Rescuers found Mrs Paraskevopoulou's body on a hillside. Her arms were wrapped around her children, three girls, aged 15, 12 and ten, and a boy of five.

The schoolmistress's holiday home, in Artemida in the western Peloponnese, was untouched by fire. Neighbour Vassiliki Tzevelekou said: "If they had stayed at home, nothing would have happened to them. The house has not suffered any damage. They would be alive now."

The Paraskevopoulous, from Athens, were enjoying the end of the summer holiday season when fires started breaking out near Artemida.

Local officials quickly urged everybody to gather in the main square for a mass evacuation. "It was horrible," said Ioannis Tzevelekou, 15. "The fire came over like a huge tide."

His mother Lambrini, 37, said: "Everyone was in a panic. Within ten minutes, the fire swept in from the east and was all around us, both above and below the village.

"They gathered everyone in the square, Athanasia and her four children, along with two young foreign kids, two grandmothers and four other children, all left together packed in a car.

"She was a very good woman. What happened was so unlucky."

Outside town, the drivers reached a fork in the road and decided to head for Zaharo about six miles away.

"There were two roads to choose from," said village president Giorgos Korifas. "There was no other alternative out of town. If you went down the Zaharo road, you died. If you went on the other road, you lived."

A number of the vehicles in the convoy also ploughed into the fire engine, claiming several lives.

Dionysios Kokkaliaris, who lost family in the crash, showed television reporters the scene of the tragedy yesterday.

The Paraskevopoulous died on Friday, a day when Greek firemen were at full stretch, fighting 124 major blazes.

Fifty- six more fires were reported yesterday although Greek officials say they hope the worst is over. Huge swathes of forest and farmland have been ravaged, leaving nothing but acres of scorched earth.

In many villages, locals refused to board helicopters sent to rescue them because they did not want to be parted from their possessions. One elderly couple in their seventies died after turning down a lift in a police car because they wouldn't leave their donkey behind.

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Some resorted to unconventional means to save their homes. "I had 300 litres of wine in the house so I poured it into a fertiliser pump and I started dousing the house to get it wet," said Georgios Dimopoulos, a 64-year-old farmer who spent 17 hours successfully protecting his home in Makistos.

The Greek government came under angry attack yesterday for its handling of the crisis. The issue is likely to dominate political debate before early general elections scheduled for September 16.

Ministers, who have declared a state of emergency, blamed arson. More than 30 suspects have been arrested.