Man found stabbed on Haifa street dies of wounds

A man in his 30s who was found laying in the street in Haifa late on Sunday with multiple stab wounds to his body died of his wounds early Monday morning, police said.

The incident was criminal in nature, according to the police officials who indicated it may have been a result of a criminal rivalry.

The man, who has not been identified in the press, was found on Hanna Senesh street in the city in serious condition. He was taken to the Bnei Zion Medical Center in Haifa after first receiving treatment at the scene by paramedics.

He later died of his injuries.

Police have launched an investigation into the stabbing and a search for the perpetrator or perpetrators.

Earlier this year, one person was killed and another injured in two shootings in Haifa that were later believed to have been part of a terror rampage.

The suspect, an Arab Israeli from Haifa’s predominantly Arab neighborhood of Halissa, turned himself in to police after a three-day manhunt in early January.

On January 3, Yehiel Iluz, 48, a senior judge on a Haifa rabbinic court for conversion, was moderately wounded in the first shooting on the city’s Haatzma’ut Road. Some 30 minutes later, Guy Kafri, 47, a van driver from Haifa’s Nesher neighborhood, was shot and killed on nearby Hagiborim Street.

First reports of the incidents indicated a case of mistaken identity in a possible gangland shooting, but as the investigation went on, police increasingly began to suspect it was a terror attack.

A spate of stabbings, car-rammings and shooting attacks by mainly Palestinian assailants that began in October 2015 has waned over the last several months, though sporadic incidents have persisted. Some of the attackers were Arab Israelis.