Police have arrested six people accused of starting fires deliberately as more than 100 blazes continue to burn out of control across eastern Australia.
Widespread public anger followed claims that up to 40 of these fires - now forming 372 miles of uncontrolled blazes across New South Wales - may be due to arson.
However, the head of a new taskforce charged with tracking down the culprits said little evidence had been collected linking arsonists with the biggest blazes around Sydney.
"We have minimal intelligence to indicate any acts of arson. However, that's not to say it hasn't occurred," said police commander, Mr John Laycock. "At this stage we do not know how big the criminal side of it is." All six suspects were young men accused of lighting small fires that were quickly brought under control. Early yesterday a motorist caught a youth of 19 allegedly lighting grass in the capital, Canberra, just a mile from the national parliament. The teenager has been charged with lighting a fire in an open place.
A second Canberra man was charged with deliberately starting a fire, while a 20-year-old stands accused of lighting a grass fire in western Sydney.
Three 15-year-olds were also caught lighting fires in a national park near Wollongong, 50 miles south of Sydney.
Meanwhile, the New South Wales government ordered a total ban lighting fires in the state, where 15,000 firefighters have been working in 12-hour shifts to contain the existing outbreaks. The crews face a hazardous weekend in which strong winds and high temperatures could fan the fires further towards suburban areas. "This is going to be one of the toughest times we've had in years," said Mr John Winter of the NSW rural fire service.
There are far more fires now than earlier in the week.
Weather forecasters said there was a chance of thunderstorms later tomorrow, but warned that these would bring relatively little rain while raising the prospect of lightning strikes, which have been the main natural cause of the fires.
Firebreaks have been cut through the heavily wooded Blue Mountains, 50 miles west of Sydney, to try to prevent blazes reaching commuter towns in the world heritage area.
Rising winds and temperatures yesterday afternoon meant it became too risky for fire crews to continue the controlled burning of areas to create firebreaks.
Aerial firefighting was also halted due to poor visibility due to heavy smoke. Fire service commissioner, Mr Phil Koperberg, said that fire crews were facing a very difficult four days because the majority of fires were spreading, with little prospect of containing them any time soon.
NSW is resigned to losing its 15,000-hectare royal national park. Officials said that the fire would have a devastating and permanent effect on plants and native animals in the area; only deer, which are not indigenous, are able to outrun the flames.
AFP adds:
A Canadian company has said Australian authorities turned down its offer to supply huge firefighting aircraft to waterbomb the bushfires. Global Emergency Response spokesman, Mr John Anderson, speaking from Calgary, in Canada told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio their long range Russian Ilyushin 76 fire bomber could douse an area measuring half a mile by 80 yards in more than 40,000 litres of water in seven or eight seconds.
A spokesman for New South Wales emergency services minister, Mr Bob Debus, said the Ilyushin aircraft had been trialled after the 1994 Sydney bushfires but it had been found unsuitable for Australian conditions.