EIN HOD, Israel (AP) — The cause of the worst forest fire in Israel’s history is likely negligence, not arson, authorities said Saturday, as firefighters from around the world battled the blaze whipping through northern pine forests toward the Mediterranean.
A spokesman for Israel’s police would not go into detail about the kind of negligence or explain why authorities were now leaning away from earlier suspicions of arson until further investigation had been carried out.
By midday Saturday, firefighters still had not brought the blaze under control, said the spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld.
The fires burning north of the city of Haifa began Thursday, killing 41 people — most of them prison guards whose bus was engulfed by flames while they were on their way to evacuate a prison. The fires have forced the evacuation of 17,000 people.
The blaze was burning through the Carmel Forest, a prized area of woodland, sending a dark cloud of ash over much of northern Israel.
Israel’s small firefighting force was overwhelmed and the country sent out an unprecedented call for international help. Aircraft from Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and Britain were dumping sea water and flame retardant over the area.
Two more communities were evacuated Saturday morning. Some residents refused to go and pleaded with firefighters for help save their homes. One woman in the small artist community of Ein Hod desperately tried to protect her home from the encroaching flames with only a garden hose.
Residents of a nearby farming village were also ordered to leave.
Above them, small planes swooped and dumped orange fire retardant and sea water over tracts of dry pines that were lit in flames.
U.S. planes laden with equipment were expected to land later Saturday, alongside planes sent from New York City’s firefighting department, a military official said.
Fewer than half of those killed had been identified by late Friday because bodies had been burned beyond recognition.
The cadet prison guards were from some of Israel’s diverse communities: Arabs, Israelis of Russian and Ethiopian descent, working class Jews of Middle Eastern descent. They included young women about to be married and men who left behind widows.
The fire had burned about 15 square miles (40 square kilometers) of land — at least half of that national forest, said Hanan Goder of the Foreign Ministry, which is partly coordinating the response to the fire.
While small by international standards, the loss of the verdant forest was keenly felt in Israel, where only 7 percent of the land is wooded.
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