Five large fires were still burning in the Peloponnese peninsula to the south of Athens and the island of Evia east of the capital, but inhabited areas were not in threat, a fire department spokesman said.

"The fires are burning over an enormous area which firemen cannot easily access on foot, it would require a force of tens of thousands of people," fire department spokesman Nikolaos Diamantis told reporters on Friday evening.

Temperatures were forecast to reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in these areas and in Athens on Saturday while stormy weather was expected in the north.

Lower temperatures and lighter winds had helped firefighters earlier this week to get to grips with the fires that have killed at least 63 people and destroyed around 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of forest and agricultural land.

Ten fire-fighting plans and three helicopters were operating in the Peloponnese, where the situation was worst on Mount Parnon, near the town of Sparta.

"The fires on Mount Parnon are at a great altitude and airborne units are needed to counter them," Diamantis said.

New fires broke out Friday on the island of Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea and in the northern region of Kilkis but were contained, the fire department said.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso flew to Greece early on Saturday morning to assess the vast damage, and flew by helicopter over the Peloponnese with Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.

The Peloponnese inferno started on August 24 in the wake of a heatwave, the third to hit Greece since the beginning of the summer.