Crews battle scattered fires in Athens suburbs, helped by calmer winds, reinforcements

Firefighters in Greece battled scattered fires as Tuesday broke, hoping to contain the remains of the major wildfire that burned into the northern suburbs of Athens, triggering evacuations and leaving at least one person dead.

With strong winds that had fanned the flames on Sunday and Monday dying down overnight, the fire department said the fire no longer had any active, advancing fronts and firefighters were concentrating their efforts on extinguishing the flames in hundreds of slow-burning areas.

Authorities were racing to extinguish as much of the blaze as possible ahead of Tuesday afternoon, when winds were predicted to pick up again, with a forecast of gusts reaching up to 60-70 kilometers (37-43 miles) per hour.

Reinforcements in the form of water-dropping aircraft, firefighters and vehicles were arriving from France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Turkey,...