Chile wildfire death toll climbs to 112, hundreds still missing

The number of people killed in fierce forest fires in the Chile's Valparaíso region on the Pacific coast has risen to at least 112.
Chile President Gabriel Boric announced a two-day period of national mourning starting on Monday to honour the dead.
"This is the worst tragedy our country has experienced since the 2010 earthquake," said Boric as he met with victims during a visit to the disaster area on Sunday. More than 520 people lost their lives in the earthquake.
"The most important thing now is to save lives and put out the fires," Boric said, offering his support to victims at a hospital in the city of Viña del Mar, north-west of Santiago.
The number of dead and injured is expected to rise, Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said on Sunday.
"We have a lot of preliminary and not yet officially confirmed information that indicates that we will reach much higher numbers," she said, adding that more than 300 people were still missing.
Thirty-two of the victims have already been identified, the South American country's forensic institute announced.
The forestry authority said there are now 188 fires across the country, covering an area totalling almost 29,000 hectares.
Thousands of houses were damaged or destroyed, more than 3,000 in the Valparaíso region alone, said Tohá.
The region west of the capital Santiago, where according to the government around 1.8 million people live, is the worst affected by the fires. Near the coastal towns of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, a fire had spread to an area of around 11,000 hectares.
Boric declared a state of emergency in the affected areas on Friday in order to mobilize resources. He also instructed the Defence Ministry to deploy more military units.
A curfew was imposed on some communities to facilitate fire-fighting and rescue operations.
The Interior Ministry said the government had "serious information" that the fire near Valparaíso was started deliberately. Further south in the Maule region, a person had been detained for causing a fire while working with welding equipment.
In summer in the Southern Hemisphere, severe forest fires are a frequent occurrence. Last year, more than 425,000 hectares of land burned in the centre and south of Chile. At least 26 people lost their lives.