Vrontado, Greece - A dazzling war of fireworks marked Greek Orthodox celebrations of Easter, the country's biggest holiday.
The century-old mock rocket battle took place on the island of Chios, despite a safety crackdown earlier last week.
On the night of Holy Saturday, parishioners of the Virgin Mary and St Mark churches in the village of Vrontado fired off about 50,000 rockets at the opposing belfries, the public television station Net reported.
With 97 per cent of Greeks identified as Orthodox Christians, preparations for Easter began with millions traveling to their home villages to mark the holiday on Sunday with their relatives.
The Greek Orthodox Church held a special Mass and up and down the country families gathered around the traditional meal of roasted lamb.
Karolos Papoulias, the Greek President, and other political leaders visited military units to celebrate Easter with the troops, conducting such traditional rituals as breaking the red-coloured Easter eggs to mark the end of Lent, the 40-day period of fasting and reflection leading up to the festival.
Mr Papoulias visited a military base near the Greek border with Albania while the Prime Minister, Costas Caramanlis, went to the Dekelias base northwest of Athens.
The religious holiday began with an Easter Mass at midnight on Sunday where the faithful lit candles from the “Holy Fire”, which comes from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the site where most Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried.
For believers, the Greek Orthodox patriarch enters the Holy Sepulchre, recites special prayers and waits in the darkened church at Jesus’s tomb for the Holy Fire to light an oil lamp.
The flame is shared by candles and was transported by a special plane on Saturday from Jerusalem to Athens, and then flown to churches around Greece.
Orthodox Christians mark Easter a week after Catholics and Protestants.