Haifa Fire Extinguished but Others Rage Elsewhere!

Local Editor

The "Israeli" entity's firefighters on Friday reined in a blaze that had spread across the country's third-largest city of Haifa and forced tens of thousands of settlers to flee, but continued to battle more than a dozen other fires around the country for the fourth day in a row.

Some 60,000 settlers had yet to return to their settlements as the entity's police forces and firefighting units were still heavily deployed in the Haifa area for fear that the fire could be reignited due to the rare dry, windy weather.

Though no serious injuries were caused, several dozen settlers were hospitalized for smoke inhalation. Hundreds of homes were damaged and in a rare move, the "Israeli" entity on Thursday called up its military reservists to join overstretched police and firefighters and made use of an international fleet of firefighting aircraft sent by several countries.

The "Israeli" regime's police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a small village in the forests near al-Quds [Jerusalem] was evacuated overnight as several settlement units there caught fire.

Overall, he said 12 settlers had been arrested across the "Israeli" entity on suspicion of arson as the entity's leaders had accused Arab assailants of intentionally setting the blazes.

The "Israeli" entity's police Chief Roni Alsheich told reporters on Thursday that early indications on the fires pointed toward a series of "politically motivated" arson attacks.

The fires began three days ago at the "Neve Shalom community" near al-Quds where "Israeli" settlers and Arabs live together.

Later, blazes erupted in the northern "Israeli" entity area of Zichron Yaakov and elsewhere near al-Quds before the largest ones spread across Haifa.

The rash of fires is the worst since 2010, when the "Israeli" entity suffered the single deadliest wildfire in its history. That blaze burned out of control for four days, killed 42 settlers and was extinguished only after firefighting aircraft arrived from as far away as the United States.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team