Dramatic photos show Israel's giant wildfires engulfing whole streets

Dramatic photos have begun to emerge of the wildfires tearing through Israel.

Reuters reported that tens of thousands of residents were ordered to flee Israel's third largest city Haifa on Thursday.

Press Association has also published a sequence of images of locals carrying their possessions as they escape the blaze. Around 300,000 people live in Haifa, which is in the north of Israel.

Police said they don't know what caused the fires and had no hard evidence at this stage that arson is to blame.

Scroll on to see the scale of the emergency.