Euro zone leaders struck a deal with private banks and insurers on Thursday for them to accept a 50 percent loss on their Greek government bonds under a plan to lower Greece's debt burden and try to contain the two-year-old euro zone crisis. The agreement was reached after more than eight hours of hard-nosed negotiations involving bankers, heads of state, central bankers and the International Monetary Fund.

It aims to draw a line under spiraling debt problems that have threatened to unravel the European single currency project.

Euro zone leaders have also agreed to scale up the European Financial Stability Facility, their 440 billion euro ($600 billion) bailout fund set up last year. The fund has already been used to provide help to Ireland, Portugal and Greece, leaving around 290 billion euros available.Around 250 billion of that will be leveraged 4-5 times,producing a headline figure of around 1.0 trillion euros, whichwill be deployed in a variety of ways. Leaders hope that will be enough to stave off any worsening of the debt problems in Italy and Spain, the region's third and fourth largest economies respectively. Text by Reuters, photos by agencies.