Greece ? A partial drop in gale-force winds early today offered hard-pressed Greek firefighters a brief respite after wildfires raged unchecked for two days north of Athens, burning houses and swaths of forest while forcing thousands to flee their homes.

But Fire Brigade officials cautioned that the fires still threatened inhabited areas on the capital’s northern fringes, the eastern coastal town of Nea Makri and nearby Marathon — site of one of history’s most famous battlegrounds.

Several houses were gutted but there were no reports of deaths or injuries. There was huge damage to the countryside, however, with thousands of acres of the area’s rapidly dwindling forests gone.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said the fire — one of more than 90 that broke out across Greece over the weekend — was hard to tame.

“The situation remains very difficult,” he said after a fire brigade briefing. “The enormous (firefighting) effort will continue on all fronts throughout the night.”

In Nea Makri, south of Marathon, local authorities said a blaze stretching for 2.5-miles was tearing down a hillside towards some houses, and a dozen nuns were evacuated from a nearby Christian Orthodox convent.

Water-dropping aircraft were to resume operations at first light today, assisted by aircraft from France, Italy and Cyprus. More than 2,000 firefighters, soldiers and volunteers are fighting the blaze on the ground.

Officials have not said what started the fire. Hundreds of forest blazes plague Greece every summer and many are set intentionally — often by unscrupulous land developers or animal farmers seeking to expand their grazing land.

In many afflicted areas, despairing residents pleaded for firefighters and equipment that were nowhere to be seen. On Sunday, thousands of residents of Athens’ northern outskirts evacuated their homes, fleeing in cars or on foot. The fire destroyed several houses as it advanced across an area more than 30 miles in circumference.