HAIFA: International firefighting planes and tons of equipment arrived in Israel Friday as more than a dozen countries pitched in to help fight a vast fire which has killed 41 people. At least four Canadair water bombers could be seen flying through the smoke-choked skies near the northern port city of Haifa, dropping water and fire retardant into the sea of flames. Two helicopters and three small planes were also involved in the huge task of quelling the inferno, which has swept across more than 10,000 acres of land since it erupted Thursday morning. In a statement to his security cabinet Friday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said four planes from Greece had arrived in the area, along with a plane and a police helicopter from Cyprus. Two British helicopters were also helping fight the enormous blaze from above, while a group of Jordanian firefighters tackled the flames on the ground. Bulgaria sent 92 firefighters, who were accompanied to the scene by the country's deputy foreign minister Dimiter Tzantchev. Israel has only 1,500 firefighters, a number widely accepted as woefully inadequate for a country of 7.6 million people. Despite lingering diplomatic tensions between Israel and Turkey, Ankara said it would send two firefighting planes in a gesture personally ordered by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, CNN Turk television reported. The head of Turkey's emergency situations agency, Mehmet Ersoy, told Anatolia news agency the decision was a “humanitarian gesture” to the Jewish state. – Agence France
