Arms smuggling suspect killed in car crash during police chase in south

A man was killed this evening after losing control of his vehicle while being pursued by police near the southern Bedouin community of Ararat an-Naqab, police say.

According to police, officers from the Magen southern border intelligence force started pursuing the car over suspicions it was being used to smuggle illegal arms. The car “drove wildly” away, police say.

During the chase, officers shot at the car’s tires, and the driver threw an M16 rifle out of the vehicle, according to police. He then “continued driving wildly until losing control and getting himself into an accident,” they say, adding that Magen David Adom medics pronounced him dead on the scene.

The ambulance service identified the driver as a 25-year-old man. His name was not immediately available.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir says he “backs the fighters of the Southern District’s Magen unit who were operating against a firearms criminal” as part of the “New Order” operation that Ben Gvir launched in November in Bedouin communities in the southern Negev.

“What we’ve done in Tarabin, Lakia and Tel Sheva — we’ll be doing all over the Negev,” Ben Gvir says, naming Bedouin communities that have seen large police deployment amid the operation.

The man killed this evening is the second known Bedouin casualty of the operation, after 36-year-old Muhammad Hussein Tarabin was shot dead by a policeman during a search of his home in Tarabin earlier this month.