173 dead in Australia wildfires: police

AFP - 1 hour 39 minutes ago

WHITTLESEA, Australia (AFP) - - The death toll from the worst wildfires in Australia's history has jumped to 173, police said Tuesday, as troops and firefighters battled to save communities threatened by the flames.

The Country Fire Authority in devastated Victoria state, where all of the deaths have occurred, issued a series of alerts warning of possible flare-ups across the region, as nervous residents prepared for the worst.

Shifting winds threatened to send the wildfires beyond containment lines hacked out by thousands of firefighters, most of them exhausted volunteers who have been working for days with little rest.

The firestorm has engulfed entire towns and wiped out families, triggering both heartache and anger after police revealed some of the blazes were set by arsonists .

"There is a huge effort to get them under control (but) tragically we will have more deaths later this week," Victoria Premier John Brumby told public television.

The Australian Associated Press quoted Victoria police as saying the death toll had risen to 173, with most of the new victims found in two small towns, Strathewen and St Andrews, to the northeast of Melbourne.

Two dozen fires were still burning in the state early Tuesday. Officials urged residents of the town of Healesville to be vigilant, saying high winds could send burning embers into the air, increasing the likelihood of fires.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said any arsonists involved were guilty of "mass murder" as police strung up crime scene tape in some of the worst hit fire zones.

"This is of a level of horror that few of us anticipated," Rudd said, choking with emotion as he recounted the messages of support received from around the world.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sent her condolences and Australia's parliament suspended its normal business to mark what Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard called "one of the darkest days in Australia's peacetime history."

Tales of tragedy, fear and narrow escapes transfixed the nation, as images of the towering flames dominated television and newspapers.

Huddled under a damp blanket in a puddle in a creek, as the conflagration roared overhead "like a jet engine," Sonja Parkinson was convinced she and her infant son Sam would die.

Instead, their flimsy shelter saved them from the inferno that claimed at least 32 lives in their town of Kinglake.

"The two front rooms were ablaze. I couldn't see. It was black," she told The Australian newspaper.

"We went down to the creek and we hid. This little one was so brave under the blanket."

The fires have so far swept through 3,000 square kilometres (1,200 square miles), leaving smouldering ruins, as authorities probe whether arsonists were to blame.

Police described the entire town of Marysville, one of the worst-hit areas, as a crime scene.

In nearby Kinglake, the charred bodies of four children were found huddled with that of an adult, believed to be a parent.

Police identified the four as children only from the size of their skulls, The Australian newspaper reported.

With Kinglake flattened, residents further east were nervously waiting to see if they would suffer the same fate.

"People are nervous, we are at the mercy of the weather," said businessman James Lacey from the town of Yackandandah.

Brumby launched a review of the way authorities handle bushfires, admitting that existing advice telling people to either leave their home early or stay on and fight the flames had proved flawed.

"There were many people who had done all of the preparations, had the best fire plans in the world and tragically it didn't save them," he told commercial radio.

Thousands of animals -- kangaroos and koalas as well as cattle and sheep -- are also believed to have perished.