Ethiopia said yesterday it had deployed some 70,000 people to fight a raging forest fire in the south of the country but international assistance was still needed. Kuma Demeksa, head of a government committee set up to deal with the blaze, said soldiers, local farmers and university students had been mobilised to tackle the fire.But he said international help was still required to provide aerial support to fight the three-week-old fire which has already destroyed at least 70,000 hectares of forest, scrub and coffee plantations.