KINGLAKE (Australia), Feb 8: At least 108 people were killed and entire towns razed in the worst wildfire disaster in Australian history, described by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Sunday as “hell in all its fury”.

People died in their cars as they attempted to escape the inferno -- smouldering wrecks on roads outside this town told a tale of horror -- while others were burnt to death in their homes.

While the deadly fires and a heatwave raged in southeast Australia, floods from torrential rains claimed lives in the north, with one victim a five-year-old boy feared snatched by a crocodile as he walked his dog.

The death toll from the fires jumped from 84 to 108 early on Monday, the Australian Associated Press said, quoting police.

But there were fears it could rise yet as medics treated badly burned survivors and emergency crews made it through to more than 700 houses destroyed by the fires, some of which have been blamed on arsonists.

The devastating fires have affected around 3,000 square kilometres.

“Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria in the last 24 hours. Many good people lie dead, many injured,” Mr Rudd told reporters, deploying army units to help 3,000 firefighters battling the flames.

The number of dead rose steadily throughout Sunday as rescue crews reached townships that bore the brunt of the most intense firestorm northwest of Melbourne, which survivors likened to a nuclear bomb.

The fires flared on Saturday, fanned by high winds after a heatwave sent temperatures soaring to 46 degrees Centigrade.

They wiped out the resort village of Marysville and largely destroyed the town of Kinglake, north of Melbourne, with houses, shops, petrol stations and schools razed to the ground.

An AFP photographer who made it into Kinglake described a road strewn with wrecked cars telling of desperate, failed attempts to escape.

The cars appeared to have crashed into each other or into trees as towering flames put an end to their desperate flight from the town. Some did not even make it onto the road, said Victoria Harvey, a resident waiting at a roadblock to be allowed to return to the site of her destroyed home.

In Kinglake, scores of homes were levelled along with shops and the school.—AFP