Villagers have joined about 900 firefighters to battle blazes on the Greek island of Evia, despite authorities urging residents to leave. Locals, often in T-shirts, battled the flames on several fronts, as fires burnt for the eighth day.

“The Greek state must never forget what happened in northern Evia”, - said Yiannis Kontzias, the mayor of Istiaia, a town in the north of the island. - “Helicopters helped a lot, and if we had done that since the beginning we would have avoided all this destruction”.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis described the fires that have swept through the country as “a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions”.

Smoke and ash from Evia, which is close to the mainland, blocked out the sun and turned the sky orange.

The fire, which began on August 3, is the most severe of hundreds in the past week that have engulfed forests, homes and businesses, and forced hundreds to flee by sea.