Haifa, Israel - Responding to an unprecedented Israeli distress call, aircraft from Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and Britain dumped sea water and flame retardant Friday, battling a woodland inferno that has killed dozens, displaced thousands and ravaged one of the Holy Land's most prized forests.

As the country mourned the dead, Israelis - long known for their high-tech society and vaunted rescue missions abroad - were stunned at their firefighters' helplessness in quelling the blaze, the worst forest fire in the nation's history.

Still, for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - embattled over the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace effort - it was also a chance to show that Israel was perhaps not so isolated after all. Even the Palestinian Authority pitched in with firefighting units.

Suspicions of arson persisted on Day Two of the blaze as it rampaged through the Carmel Forest near Haifa, Israel's third-largest city. Police said small brush fires that broke out Friday appeared to be deliberately set, though police chief David Cohen said it was possible the main fire erupted because of carelessness.

Anguished families began burying the 41 dead - most of them prison guards who perished Thursday when the blaze engulfed a bus that was transporting them to evacuate a prison. Fewer than half had been identified by late Friday because bodies had been burned beyond recognition.

The human tragedy was compounded by the loss of precious woodland in a country where only 7 percent of the land is forested. Tree-planting has an almost mystical quality here: For decades, Jews the world over have dropped coins into blue-and-white boxes of the Jewish National Fund, which has planted 240 million trees in the Carmel Forest and elsewhere across Israel since its founding in 1901.

Though the scorched woodland covered an area of only about eight square miles - or some 1 percent of Israel's forest land - the fire was felt as a deep national loss.

Outside Haifa, wind-driven flames towering nearly 100 feet turned the sky crimson as they spread across hilly pine forest toward the Mediterranean Sea. Flying back and forth, helicopters and planes scooped up sea water and dumped it on the blaze. Turkish planes scattered powdery white flame retardant over the smoky hills, dotted with charred banana trees and cypress trees stripped of their leaves.

In Brussels, the European Union announced a 92-member Bulgarian firefighting unit was on its way to Israel to join air tankers and crews from Greece, Britain and Cyprus; additional planes were offered by other EU nations and Russia. The U.S. sent in a team of firefighters Friday as well as tons of fire retardant and foam, and pledged to help with additional aircraft.

Israel's Mideast allies, Jordan and Egypt, also sent firefighters and equipment.

Israel, a country of 7.6 million, has only 1,400 firefighters - or 16 for every 100,000 residents. Although a direct comparison is impossible because Israel is so sparsely forested, that number compares unfavorably to other developed nations, such as the U.S., Japan and Greece, which have between five and seven times as many firefighters per capita.