Firefighting plane (illustration)
Firefighting plane (illustration)Ari Dudkevitch/Flash 90

Four Israeli firefighting planes were dispatched early on Wednesday morning to try and put out a massive fire in the Jordan Valley region.

The planes flew to tackle the fire adjacent to the resort village of Brosh Habika off Highway 90, which spans the entire length of Israel roughly following the Jordan border.

The blaze was raging in a local Jordan Valley nature reserve near the village.

Representatives of the Nature and Parks Authority arrived on site, together with two firefighting crews from the Judea and Samaria district.

The fire first began on Tuesday on the Jordanian side of the border, and only in the early morning hours on Wednesday did it cross over the border fence to the Israeli side.

Brosh Habika, the site of the firefighting, was founded by retired IDF colonel Sraya Ofer. Ofer was brutally murdered by Arab terrorists in October 2013.

The assailants attacked Ofer outside his home in Brosh Habika, savagely assaulting him with iron bars and axes. His wife Monique was able to flee the terrorists after sustaining only light wounds.

The terrorists revealed under interrogation that it was a deliberate terror attack, after sources in the military caused anger by suggesting Ofer was murdered in a robbery gone wrong, in statements made in the days after the killing.