Israel's most senior policewoman died Monday of severe injuries suffered in a huge forest fire, raising the death toll in the blaze to 42.
Police said the fires that consumed more than 12,000 acres of woodlands, millions of trees and more than 100 homes, were extinguished Monday, five days after taking hold of the Carmel ridge outside the port city of Haifa.
Efforts to beat down the inferno were helped by overnight rains, and emergency equipment rushed to Israel from across Europe, the United States, Asia, Egypt and Jordan.
Ahuva Tomer, 53, the first woman commander named to the Haifa police force, sustained severe burns in the blaze after being trapped inside her vehicle. She died of the injuries and was buried with full police honors Monday.
She had become stuck near a bus filled with prison guard cadets headed to evacuate a jail, most of whom also perished in the fire.
Israeli television stations showed footage of Tomer driving into the forest to aid relief efforts as doctors at a Haifa hospital struggled to save her life.
"It looks like an unnecessary, damaging fire," she tells a reporter in the clip.
"Her last moment, when her car touched the fire, she looked out at us," President Shimon Peres said in a eulogy for Tomer on Monday. "That's a moment none of us will forget ... a high point in her bravery."
Throughout the weekend, newscasts carried frequent updates on her condition and images of her final interview. Her death dominated newscasts throughout the day.
Several thousand people attended her funeral in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, where she had been police chief since last year. Colleagues praised her leadership and friends said that Tomer devoted herself to the police force.
"I lived with Ahuva for 20 years, but I lived on the sidelines, because her first love was the Israeli police," said Danny Rosen, Tomer's longtime partner, at the hospital where she was treated.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named a task force to see to swift compensation for dozens of families whose homes were razed in what he has called Israel's worst blaze.
Netanyahu also said his office oversee a campaign to bolster the nation's firefighting force.
The disaster has led to public calls for the resignation of Interior Minister Eli Yishai, an ally in Netanyahu's ruling coalition, over a shortage of firefighting equipment that forced Israel to seek help elsewhere.
Israeli media assessed the cost of the fire's damage at around 2 billion shekels ($550 million).
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said three teenagers arrested in the past few days on suspicion of setting the blaze through negligence. Two, accused of failing to properly put out a camp fire were under house arrest, he said.
A third, a boy of 14, was arrested Monday on suspicion of tossing glowing coals from a hookah pipe he had been smoking into the forest, which may have ignited the flames, Rosenfeld said.
Rosenfeld says the boy told police he panicked, fled the scene and returned to school without telling anyone as the fire quickly spread through the forest.