KINGLAKE (Australia) - AT LEAST 96 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.

COLOMBO (Sri Lanka) - MORE than 15,000 civilians have fled Sri Lanka's northern war zone over the last three days, an official said on Sunday, as government forces appeared poised to crush the separatist Tamil Tigers.

Meanwhile, attacks in the north killed at least 21 rebels over the weekend, according to the military.

KUALA LUMPUR - A SENIOR Malaysian opposition politician demanded on Sunday that Mr Anwar Ibrahim quit as the leader of the opposition alliance after it lost control of one of the five states it rules to the national government.

Mr Anwar's three-party alliance last week lost control of of Perak, an economically depressed state in northeastern Malaysia, to the national government after four of its legislators in the state assembly quit.

BEIJING - CHINA fired thousands of artillery shells into the sky to make it rain and prepared to divert water from its two longest rivers to fight the country's worst drought in decades, officials said on Sunday.

The drought, which has hit most of the north since November, is also affecting central and southwestern rice-growing provinces.