At least 15 people today perished in forest fires that swept across southern Greece.

Fanned by near gale-force winds and temperatures hovering around 40 degrees Centigrade the flames engulfed large swathes of the country in some of the worst blazes to hit Greece in a decade.

Two of the dead were French tourists who were caught hiking on a mountain south of Sparta.

The manager of the Lekas Hotel near Areopolis and two of his employees also died when they went out in an attempt to look for them.

Eight more people died near the village of Zaharo on the west coast of the Peloponnese when a flash fire surrounded it. Some victims were burned alive in the cars while attempting to flee.

Areopolis and Zaharo, and dozens of other villages, have been evacuated.

Massive fires ate up huge expanses on Mount Taygetos, the height overlooking Sparta, a favourite of Britons and Germans for holiday and retirement homes. No Britons have yet been reported hurt. Taygetos is the mountain on which the ancient Spartans left sickly infants to die of exposure so that they would not weaken the population.

The Greek authorities had issued a nationwide brushfire warning two days ago, citing the high winds and high temperatures. But the firefighting service found itself, for the second time this summer, short-handed.

The spread of the fires was made more difficult to control by the fact that Greece's fleet of Canadair CL-415 water bombers was mostly grounded. Severe crosswinds at Kalamata airport, a few miles from the worst fires, prevented the aircraft from taking off.

The fires came just a few weeks after a series of blazes devastated large pine woods in the hills north of Athens. Property developers planning to build on the land were widely blamed for the destruction.

With national elections less than a month away, some in Greece's conservative government claim that the opposition socialist party could be behind some of the fires to make the state mechanism seem inefficient.

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president