European Union member Portugal may seek EU disaster aid to help pay for damage caused by forest fires that have ravaged parts of the countryside, Urban Affairs Minister Jose Luis Arnaut said Monday.

"We will make an assessment of the damage done," Arnaut said on television:

"Then we will take necessary measures, both nationally and by invoking the the European solidarity fund," said Arnaut, minister for towns, local administration, housing and rural development.

A wave of forest fires has struck again in Portugal in the last few days with the start of the holiday period.

The police have launched a nationwide campaign against fire-raising and annonunced a new arrest Monday, bringing to 34 the number of suspected fireraisers held since the start of the year.

The areas of Portugal now affected are already larger than those at this time last year, a particularly bad year with 20 dead and more than 400,000 hectares (about a million acres) ravaged by flames.

Since the start of this year some 50,000 hectares have gone up in smoke, according to provisional figures from the forestry department.

Last year the European Palriament -- the EU's elected assembly -- granted Portugal aid of 48.5 million euros (58 million dollars ) from the solidarity fund.

The fund, set up in 2002 following floods in central Europe and the south of France, is available for disasters whose damage costs exceed three billion euros or 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product of the country affected.