(Ramla) Four people were killed Thursday in a car explosion “of apparent criminal origin” in Ramla, in central Israel, according to Assaf Harofe Hospital and Israeli police.
The Assaf Harofé medical center near Ramla announced in a statement “the death of four injured”, after the police announced the opening of an investigation into “the explosion (of a) car […] “apparently due to a settling of scores between Arab criminals.” According to the hospital, “six other people are still hospitalized, one of them in critical condition.” The police had initially reported 12 injured.
Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, announced that “five people had been evacuated in critical condition, including a woman in her fifties, a 15-year-old girl, a ten-year-old boy, a 5-year-old girl and a one-month-old baby.”
The front of a gutted shop bears witness to the violence of the explosion, according to images from an AFP photographer on the scene.
Ramla, south of Tel Aviv, is a mixed Jewish-Arab town.
The rise in crime among Israel’s Arab minority has worried authorities in recent years.
According to experts, Arab gangs have accumulated significant quantities of weapons over the past two decades and are involved in activities such as drug, arms and human trafficking, prostitution, extortion and money laundering.
“They tell us it’s a settling of scores, but an explosion in the city centre in broad daylight in a crowded place is crazy! My children were there an hour before,” Judith Touati, a mother of seven and resident of the city, told AFP.
“The police will continue to fight this crime with all the tools at their disposal,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said at the scene of the explosion in a video released by his office.
“Crime in the Arab sector requires more tools and resources,” added Mr. Ben Gvir, one of the figures of the Israeli extreme right, accusing the judiciary of putting obstacles in its way.
“Ben Gvir is at the scene of a bloody crime in Ramla and instead of taking responsibility, he keeps complaining – as usual -,” opposition leader Yair Lapid responded in a message on X, adding: “There were incompetent ministers before him, but he is the first to have turned failure into a profession.”