IED event in Central District, Tom Lantos Boulevard, Netanya area, Israel on Tue 2nd January 2024

A vehicle exploded in the coastal city of Netanya on Tuesday morning, injuring a 25-year-old man, apparently the driver, in what appeared to be the third criminal assassination attempt in the city in one week.

The vehicle, a Shufersal grocery delivery truck, burst into flames shortly after 8 a.m. on Tom Lantos Boulevard. Medics and police arrived within minutes, finding the victim fully conscious but seriously injured.

A bomb disposal squad discovered firearms in the burning truck, indicating underworld involvement, and leading police to investigate the explosion as an assassination attempt. The firearms were sent for further forensic examination.

It was the second suspected assassination attempt in Netanya in as many days. On Monday, reports said 41-year-old Hevron Elal, an associate of the Abutbul crime gang, was lightly injured in a car explosion on Herzl Street in the city.

On December 26, a man was killed on the city’s HaRav Yitshak Ben Hanan Street, also in a car bomb. Police discovered his body in the burning vehicle, and later identified him as Daniel Kenaw Haily, 34, a known senior crime figure. Haily appeared to have been murdered by an adversary in the criminal underworld.

Netanya, a beach town in central Israel with some 200,000 residents, has long been known as a hub of criminal activity, with a flourishing market for illegal firearms and narcotics.

Organized crime has been on the rise in Israel over the past year. A year-end report released Sunday by the Abraham Initiatives, a coexistence think tank, found that the Arab community’s unprecedentedly high number of homicides in 2023 — over twice as many as the previous year — was mainly due to increased gang violence.

According to the Haaretz news site, homicides were also up by 20% last year in the Israeli Jewish society, also largely due to organized crime.