By DPA,
Tel Aviv/Haifa: Firefighters have put out the massive forest fire that had raged on northern Israel’s Carmel Hill for four days.
At 10 p.m. (2000 GMT) Sunday only sporadic, small pockets of flames were left, Fire and Rescue Service spokesman Yoram Levy said.
Then rain started falling and helped put out the fire completely, he told DPA Monday morning.
Some 2 to 5 millimetres of rain fell on the Carmel Forest, south of the port of Haifa, the country’s third largest city, during the night, Israel Radio reported. Weather forecasts said more was forecast.
The 17,000 residents of some half a dozen villages that had been evacuated were allowed to return to their homes, including the dormitory students of Haifa University, which was to reopen its lecture halls Monday for the first time since the fire started.
The fire broke out Thursday before noon when two youths from the Arab Druze village of Usafiya, in the midst of the Carmel Forest, smoked a water pipe outside their home, according to police.
The fire claimed 41 lives, devastated 50 square km of drought-stricken land, destroyed 5 million trees, and forced 17,000 people to flee their homes.
The turning point came after an American supertanker aircraft capable of dumping 80,000 litres of water and retardant joined the firefighting effort.
Israel Air Force head Ido Nehushtan said 24 planes and helicopters from 10 countries had carried out more than 400 water-dropping missions.