Bushfires kill three

Units of the Australian Army were brought in to help exhausted volunteer firemen fighting a losing battle to control bushfires which have claimed three lives, AFP reports from Sydney.

Norman John Anthes, 45, a volunteer, became the second fire-fighter and the third person to die in the fires after he was engulfed by flames as he tried to cut down a burning tree on Tuesday. The accident happened at a nature reserve on Mount Horrible near Bathurst in the eastern state of New South Wales, in which some of the worst bushfires for 25 years are raging.