“Malicious arson” was responsible for the fire that took two lives and injured II people in the Moriah Hotel at Sdom on the Dead Sea on February 5 according to a preliminary police report released Friday.
Moshe Tiomkin, who heads a committee appointed by the Interior Ministry to investigate the blaze, said the fact that the fire appeared to have broken out simultaneously in three separate parts of the resort hotel and the speed with which it spread indicated it was not accidental.
Tiomkin, a former Tel Aviv district police commander, cited the eye-witness accounts of fire fighters who rushed to the scene within minutes after the alarm was sounded. They saw what appeared to be three fires burning independently of each other. The flames spread rapidly from the fourth floor to the top floor of the building, “too quickly to be accidental,” the fire fighters reported.
Police also suspect arson in a fire that broke out last Thursday night among fruit and vegetable stands nears the central bus station in Tel Aviv. Fire fighters fought that blaze for several hours before it was brought under control. Electric power was cut off in the area of the bus terminal.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
