Foreign fire-fighters and aircraft joined Israel teams battling dry, high winds fanning the Carmel fire early Friday, Dec. 3. The body of a missing fireman was found early Friday raising the number of fatalities to 42. Huge fires on the Carmel range continued to blaze out of control and spread. More communities are standing by at Hof Hacarmel near the sea after 17,000 were evacuated in the last 24 hours. Northern sections of Highway 4 and Highway 2 are closed to traffic. . A suspected arson attack on the West Galilee village of Tal El east of Acre, near a cluster of Arab villages, Friday night, Dec. 2, strengthened the suspicion gaining ground among police and military circles on Day Two of the fiercely rampant Carmel blaze, that Israel may also be beset by a wave of deliberately-set fires. Officers talking toDEBKAfile's sources did not identity the hand behind these attacks, commenting only that Israel appears to be confronted with a new kind of warfare outside its experience. An deliberate attempt to set on fire the fields of Mishmar Henegev in the south, not far from a military base was hardly noticed amid the agonizing effort to beat back the awesome flames of the biggest fire disaster Israel has ever faced. Seventeen endangered locations were partly or fully evacuated leaving more than 17,000 in temporary shelters. Arson was strongly suspected as the cause of separate fires erupting in three more places – Kiryat Tivon southeast of Haifa and two outside the Carmel region in Kiryat Bialik north of Haifa and Shfaram to the east. A police ambush backed by an Air Force drone trapped two men who, after looking around and seeing they were alone, lobbed firebombs in several directions.They were not identified except for the fact that they were in their thirties and came from the village of Daliat Hacarmel. It was initially assumed that the pair was part of a larger network or gang, which had sett fires on the Carmel and later in other parts of the country as part of a deliberate campaign of sabotage. Later, the police played down the incident, claiming the two men had not been handling firebombs but combustible materials and had been released. All the same, the investigators decided to bring the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security agency, into their inquiry – a pointer to their real thinking. Friday morning, near Kiryat Bialik, police found an abandoned bike and a wig, apparently abandoned by another arsonist who had apparently disguised himself with a wig and planned to ignite the local gas pump and start a fire that would have spread quickly to the factories of heavily-industrialized Haifa Bay. Spotting the police, he dumped the wig and made off. The suspicion of a politically-motivated arson conspiracy was further suggested by the damage caused the bronze statue of Alexander Zaid, the founder of the pre-state early 20th century Jewish defense organization, a frequent object of Israeli Arab vandals. A third attempt to set dense foliage on fire was discovered in near Shefaram. Had it succeeded, a conflagration on the same scale as the Carmel disaster could have swept Western Galilee. The two-day blaze has covered 35,000 dunams of the Carmel beauty spot, a favorite nature preserve and park of picnickers and nature-lovers, and destroyed at least four million trees. The heroic efforts of members of the National Parks Authority for two days failed to save the rare animals in the Carmel open zoo, but did rescue the birds.
DEBKAfile Special Report
DEBKAfile Special Report December 3, 2010, 10:25 PM (GMT+02:00)
As night fell high over the Carmel range and the planes withdrew, the flames kept on returning to places where they had been extinguished by exhausted Israeli firefighters with the help of crews and special planes from a dozen countries. Bet Oren, Haifa's Danya suburb and Haifa University are again in the path of the fire.
Northern District Police Chief Shimon Koren reported several firebomb attacks had taken place in the Haifa district Friday, after police backed by an Air Force drone caught two arsonists red-handed lobbing firebombs in several directions from a deserted spot on Mt. Carmel.
The fires which broke out Friday night near Bat Shlomo and Haifa's Neve Yaacov were both suspected arson and closed. Highway 70 which connects the area south of Haifa to Galilee.
Northern District Police commander Shimon Koren reported several firebomb attacks in the Haifa district Friday night, Dec. 2, after police backed by an Air Force drone caught two arsonists red-handed lobbing firebombs in several directions in a deserted area of Mt. Carmel. A police ambush backed by an Air Force drone trapped two men who, after looking around and seeing they were alone, lobbed firebombs in several directions. They have not been identified. The officers grabbed them and took them in for questioning.
Fires, suspected of being deliberate, have meanwhile spread to new sites - Kiryat Bialik, north of Haifa, Shefaram further inland to the east and Kiryat Tivon southeast of Haifa and the only one of the three locations actually on Mt. Carmel. Highway 70 from south of Haifa to Galilee was closed to traffic Friday night by new outbreaks near Bat Shlomo and Haifa's Neve Yosef neighborhood.
Earlier, near Kiryat Bialik, police found an abandoned bike and a wig, apparently abandoned by another arsonist who had apparently disguised himself with a wig and planned to ignite the local gas pump and start a fire that would have spread quickly to the factories of heavily-industrialized Haifa Bay.
Spotting the police, he dumped the wig and made off.
The suspicion of a politically-motivated arson conspiracy was further suggested by the damage caused the bronze statue of Alexander Zaid, the founder of the pre-state early 20th century Jewish defense organization, a frequent object of Israeli Arab vandals.
A third attempt to set dense foliage on fire was discovered in near Shefaram. Had it succeeded, a conflagration on the same scale as the Carmel disaster could have swept Western Galilee.
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