Nine killed in Australia bushfires

Nine people are confirmed dead, with four still missing, and more than 200 properties have been lost since Christmas Day in Australia’s catastrophic bushfires.

Smoke still hung thick over the south-east of the country on Wednesday evening, even as weather conditions offered a reprieve to take stock of the destruction.

On Wednesday afternoon, authorities in New South Wales and Victoria said another five people were confirmed dead, and another man presumed dead. They warned the death toll was likely to continue to rise.

At Malua Bay, on the NSW south coast, survivors spoke of how 1,000 people spent the night on the beach in a bid to seek shelter from the flames. “Everyone was on the beach, just covered in ash and smoke,” Al Baxter, the former Wallaby, told Guardian Australia. “There was a strange calmness. People were as close to the water’s edge as they could [be]. People were literally just lying on the beach trying to keep out of the smoke and ash.

In Victoria, Mick Roberts from Buchan in the East Gippsland region had been unaccounted for since Monday. He was found dead in his home on Wednesday.

“He’s not missing any more ... sorry but his body has been found in his house,” Roberts’s niece Leah Parsons said on social media. “Very sad day for us to (start) the year but we’re a bloody tight family and we will never forget our mate and my beautiful Uncle Mick,” she wrote. _The Guardian

Dhaka/AKA