THE Greek government and residents traded recriminations over devastating wildfires on Thursday as a minister suggested “criminal” unregulated building had blocked escape routes.

Panos Kammenos, the defence minister, claimed that unlicensed holiday homes in the area around Mati carried some responsibility for the heavy loss of life.

“This coast of Athens, all these properties, the majority are without a licence,”he told reporters during a visit to Mati. “They have occupied the coast without rules”

Residents had shouted the minister down as he entered the village. “You let people burn. You left us at the mercy of God,”said one woman who lost her home.

Vagelis Bournos, the local mayor, defended his decision not to evacuate the area as “citizens do not follow evacuation plans but they stay behind to protect their households”

Residents suspect the labyrinthine layout of the resort, where only a handful of narrow alleyways lead down to the beach, hampered escape efforts. A group of 26 people, whose charred bodies were found behind a closed door leading to one of the alleyways, are believed to have perished as they couldn’t find the escape route.

Dozens of relatives began submitting their DNA yesterday to help identify rows of burned corpses in the region’s morgues. A web page has been set up to track down lost relatives, but hope is fading that any of them have survived.

Greek fire experts claim local authorities failed to enforce fire safety regulations that could have saved lives.

Costas Synolakis, a professor of natural hazards management at the Technical University of Crete, said: “As a matter of principle, all municipalities are meant to have evacuation maps for different hazards. But in practice very few do, and unfortunately Mati did not”