Top mobster killed in latest gangland car bombing

A top member of one of Israel’s underground crime organizations was killed early Tuesday in a car bombing in the southern city of Ashkelon in what police suspect was the latest gangland hit in an ongoing battle between rival groups.

Emergency teams and bomb disposal unites were called to the coastal city’s center in the early hours of the morning after receiving reports that a vehicle had exploded and was on fire. Medics found the man dead when they arrived at the scene.

According to police, who have opened an investigation into the incident, the man was a senior member of a criminal organization in southern Israel and was previously under investigation.

Following the car bombing, a gag order was issued preventing the publication of details of the investigation, including the name of the man killed.

Also on Tuesday, police arrested a known underworld figure on suspicion of extortion, assault and making threats. He is set to attend a hearing on the extension of his remand at the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court later in the day. Details of that case were also put under a court-imposed gag order.

Tuesday’s deadly attack was the latest in a series of high-profile gang violence incidents in Ashkelon and across the country and is suspected to be connected to a long-fought rivalry between two prominent criminal organizations.

Last month police arrested three men near Ashkelon suspected carrying out an attempted gangland assassination on the son of a top mob boss. Two of the suspects, Tel Aviv residents aged 41 and 33, were riding a motorcycle and had three explosive devices in their possession. They were reported to have purchased the bombs from the third suspect, a 20-year-old Ashkelon resident.

The assassination attempt, details of which remain under gag order, was reported to have been planned retribution for the murder of 30-year-old Shai Shirazi, the son of Rico Shirazi, a purported crime kingpin in the Sharon area, who was mortally wounded in a Tel Aviv shooting attack last year.

Police have waged a widespread campaign over recent years to crack down on organized crime, after a wave of car bombings and other assassination attempts brought the issue to the fore in 2013 and 2014.

Rico Shirazi was a central figure in so-called case 512, a massive police investigation into several crime families that brought a wave of arrests last year, including Shirazi and other underworld crime heads.

Last year, state prosecutors indicted Shirazi for his involvement in the murder of Guy Yehezkel and the attempted murder of Asi Abutbul, amid a fierce power struggle for control of Israel’s criminal underworld several years ago.

Abutbul is currently serving out a 13-year prison sentence for extortion and money laundering. Police have also linked him to the disappearance and possible murder of four people between 2000 and 2002, but has not been charged for those crimes.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.