WHITTLESEA (Australia), Feb 9: Wildfires that have claimed 166 lives threatened to engulf a dozen more Australian communities on Tuesday, leaving a grim legacy of charred homes, bodies and shattered townships.

As troops and firefighters struggled to douse the flames, Victoria state’s Country Fire Authority issued a series of alerts warning of possible flare-ups across the southeast state.

Shifting winds threatened to send the deadliest fires in Australian history 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 were set by arsonists.

Victorian Premier John Brumby said the fires would inevitably claim more lives as the crisis continues, and early Tuesday the Australian Associated Press quoted police as saying the death toll had risen to 166 from 131.

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

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said any arsonists involved were guilty of “mass murder”. “This is of a level of horror that few of us anticipated,” he said, choking with emotion as he recounted the messages of support from around the world.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth 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.The fires have so far swept through 3,000 square kilometres, leaving smouldering ruins, some now surrounded by police tape as authorities probe whether arsonists were to blame.—AFP