Two men shot dead in northern Israel’s Baqa al-Gharbiya
Police investigating circumstances of apparent murder after men found in vehicle parked in a field with gunshot wounds to their bodies
Two men were shot dead in the northern Israel town of Baqa al-Gharbiya on Sunday evening.
In a statement, the Israel Police said that medics found the two men in a parked car in an open field inside the town, with gunshot wounds to their bodies.
The medics had arrived at the scene after receiving a report about two people who had been critically injured in a violent incident, Magen David Adom said in a statement. The medics determined the death of the two men shortly after arriving, following a medical examination.
The identities of the men have yet to be confirmed, the police said.
The statement added that an investigation had been opened into the circumstances surrounding their deaths, and forces were searching for suspects.
Police said that they were treating the incident as “criminal,” indicating they didn’t suspect a terror-related motive.
The apparent murder of the two men was the latest in a series of violent incidents in Israel’s Arab communities in recent months.
Amid the spike in violent crime, 26 homicides were recorded in Arab communities in July alone, and in total, 136 deaths have been recorded since the start of 2024. In comparison, there were 138 homicides in the Arab community in the whole of 2023, which was itself, an all-time high.
Security officials were reported on Sunday to have warned government ministers that terror groups were trying to utilize crime organizations inside the Arab community in order to carry out nationalistic attacks.
According to the Haaretz daily, the security officials who briefed ministers highlighted the ongoing failure to rein in the unprecedented wave of violent crime, coupled with wartime proliferation and increasing availability of illegal weapons in the community.
The ministers were told that the crime organizations were “a strategic threat to national security.”
