Over 100 firefighters were rushed to the village of Al-Madraa' just south of Bisha on Wednesday as an extensive fire tore through 1,730 date palm trees. Witnesses said fire crews struggled with the blaze for several hours as it threatened to spread to neighboring gardens and farmland with the high winds. A Civil Defense official said that fire took hold of three sites totaling nearly 80,000 square meters of land and destroyed fruit bearing and barren 2,000 trees. The cause of the blaze is not yet known.
