Police have identified the man killed in Tuesday afternoon's car explosion on Achi Eilat Street in Kiryat Haim, Haifa, as senior crime figure Rabia Abu Heikel, according to Israeli media reports. The circumstances of the explosion remain under investigation, with a possible criminal motive being probed.
Tuesday afternoon's car explosion on Achi Eilat Street in Kiryat Haim, Haifa, has been identified by police as the killing of senior crime figure Rabia Abu Heikel. The blast, which occurred around 17:19 Jerusalem time, is being treated as a criminal incident rather than a terrorist attack, police said. The identification marks a shift from initial reports: by 16:01 Jerusalem, The Zioneer had reported only that a vehicle had exploded on Ahyat Street, with fire and rescue crews on scene and no confirmed casualties or cause. Within minutes, medical crews upgraded the toll to one critical and one serious injury, before medics pronounced a death at the scene, and police began investigating a suspected criminal motive.
By 17:12 Jerusalem, police had confirmed the victim as Rabia Abu Heikel, described in Israeli media as a senior figure in a prominent northern crime family. Investigators are probing possible links to an ongoing conflict between organized crime factions in the north, a pattern The Zioneer documented earlier this week: on Sunday, a car bomb in Jaffa killed Iyad Gharb, 38, in what police are examining as a revenge killing.
No arrests have been reported in Tuesday's killing. The precise mechanism of the explosion — whether a bomb attached to the vehicle or an explosive placed nearby — has not been conclusively determined, and officials have not publicly named suspects or outlined a specific motive.
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