Police arrest 3 suspects in Rahat revenge killing after weekend of violence

Police arrested three suspects in connection with a fatal shooting in Rahat Saturday night, law enforcement officials announced Sunday, following a wave of criminal violence over the weekend that left two dead.

The shooting was apparently part of a blood feud that reignited following a brawl between two young men belonging to rival families in the southern Bedouin city. One of the men stabbed the other during the fight, police said.

In retaliation, several of his relatives came armed to the rival family’s home at around 10:30 p.m. that night and opened fire, seriously injuring two men.

Paramedics who arrived at the scene took both men to the hospital. One of the victims, 21-year-old Adam al-Ubra, succumbed to his wounds that night.

Large police forces arrived at the scene of the shooting and began searching for the perpetrators, managing to arrest the three suspects overnight.

Officers also raided the families’ residences and seized military-grade weaponry, including assault rifles and handguns they believe were likely stolen from IDF bases in the area. Among the confiscated weapons were assault rifles, pistols and ammunition.

Earlier Saturday morning, a 27-year-old doctor at Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center was seriously injured in Rahat after gunmen fired a burst of bullets at his car from close range.

The ambush was part of a separate blood feud in the city that has claimed three lives and has been going on since 2013, police said. Officers arrested five suspects who tried to flee the scene of the shooting.

Police said that the Rahat station commander “held a discussion with city leadership, making a clear and urgent appeal to put an end to the culture of revenge killings and to choose dialogue and reconciliation between the families amid the ongoing bloody conflict.”

Rahat Mayor Talal al-Krenawi has previously blamed the spiking violence on police, claiming they fail to enforce the law in the city and other Arab locales throughout Israel.

Al-Krenawi is one of several Arab mayors whose lives are under threat from criminal gangs. His office earlier this year was targeted in an attempted bombing attack by criminals who placed an explosive underneath city hall, which he claimed was just one of dozens of attempts on his life since he took office.

Separately on Saturday night, a 50-year-old man was gunned down in the northern town of Deir al-Assad while in his car.

The victim, named as Wissam Dabah, was taken in critical condition to Nahariya’s Galilee Medical Center, where medical staff declared him dead.

Victims Al-Ubra and Dabah were the 193rd and 194th to be killed in Arab society so far this year, according to the Abraham Initiatives advocacy group, marking a nine percent increase over last year’s record-breaking murder rate.

There have been six such killings in the first five days of October alone.