By Michele Kambas

ARTEMIDA, Greece, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Hundreds of black-clad mourners in the village of Artemida sobbed on Sunday as hearses carried the white coffins of a mother and her four children, victims of Greece's worst forest fires in living memory.

Teacher Athanasia Paraskevopoulou, 37, and her three girls aged 15, 12 and 10, and her five-year-old son were among 63 people killed during a 10-day inferno, suspected of being started by arsonists, that has destroyed land and devastated communities.

Paraskevopoulou's mother and brother, a policeman, also perished in the blaze, which hit the southern Peloponnese region the hardest.

Artemida was one of the first villages to be consumed by the fire storm which forced thousands to flee their homes, the family included.

Locals say Paraskevopoulou had bundled the children into the car when she saw the flames approaching the village. Driving down a blazing road her vehicle was involved in a seven-car pileup. Passengers escaped the flaming vehicles, only to die in nearby olive groves where they had sought refuge.

She was found a few metres away from the road, embracing her four children.

"Our only hope is that they did not suffer too much, that they died from the smoke," said a distraught relative who declined to be named.

Paraskevopoulou's husband Georgios appeared overwhelmed with grief as the coffins of his children were lowered into a grave of the cemetery, overlooking the scorched-out valley below. Hundreds of flowers followed the coffins as they were lowered into the grave.

"I have run out of tears. Will it bring her and the children back?" said Loukia Papadimitropoulos, 64.

Artemida and surrounding villages mourn 23 victims, including two five-year old cousins, a boy and a girl, spending their summer holidays with their grandmother who also died. They were buried on Friday, next to the Paraskevopoulou family.

"You couldn't come across a nicer woman than Athanassia. The family was incredibly close," said a woman, her eyes puffy from crying.

In a tragic twist of irony, the Paraskevopoulou home, a modest one-storey dwelling perched on a ledge overlooking rolling hills was one of the few unscathed by the fire.

At the scene of the crash, an overturned burnt-out fire truck lay among grey ashes. Several wreaths hung over the metal rim of a wheel whose tyre had melted in the intense fire. Ten metres away someone had left flowers in the dust and a blue balloon tied to the stump of an olive tree fluttered in the wind.

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