Four stabbings, two shootings and a hit-and-run over weekend

The late hours of the weekend rarely pass without incident in Israel’s major cities. This weekend was no exception as police reported on Saturday two shooting attacks, the firebombing of an apartment in Jaffa, four stabbing incidents and several accidents that, put together, left two dead and at least ten injured around the country throughout Friday and into Saturday.

A man in his thirties was shot and killed Saturday afternoon at the Kseife Junction on Road 31 in the northern Negev desert. Paramedics found the man already dead with multiple gunshot wounds in his upper torso. Police have launched an investigation of the shooting.

A 24-year-old was in moderate condition Friday after being shot in the western Galilee village of Sheikh Danon. He was evacuated to hospital in the northern coastal town of Nahariya.

Police were also scrambled on Friday to the site of a Molotov cocktail attack apparently directed at a first-floor apartment on Resh Galuta Street in Jaffa in southern Tel Aviv. The attack sparked a fire in the apartment building which was put out by firefighters. The contents of the apartment were destroyed in the fire, but no injuries were reported. Police have launched an investigation.

A 26-year-old man was stabbed in a street brawl in Rishon Lezion in the early hours of Saturday. A MDA team rushed him to Assaf Harofeh Medical Center on the city’s eastern edge. According to MDA, he had sustained several stab wounds in his upper body and was in “serious condition.”

Another street fight, on Har Zion Boulevard in southern Tel Aviv, resulted in a 27-year-old being rushed to Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital in moderate condition after also being stabbed in his upper body. The alleged attacker, who fled the scene, is known to police and a search was underway Saturday to apprehend him. The motive for the attack, according to police, is a long-standing disagreement between the two men.

And in Haifa, another young man, also in his twenties, was stabbed in the head during a brawl on Giborim Street. He was rushed in serious condition to the city’s Rambam Medical Center.

A 50-year-old Tirat Carmel woman was in serious condition Saturday afternoon from stab wounds sustained to her upper torso. Police have arrested her 20-year-old nephew, who also lives in the northern town, and have said he is a prime suspect in the investigation, though there was no immediate report of a motive for the attack. The woman was rushed to Rambam Medical Center for treatment.

In the northern towns of Kiryat Shemona and Rosh Pina, police arrested several teenagers, six in the former and 16 in the latter, for drug possession and attacking police officers.

There were several accidents on Israel’s roads and hiking trails over the weekend that left one dead and several others injured.

Paramedics reported a collision between a private vehicle and a minibus near the Hutzot Lahav intersection in the southern city of Beersheba late Friday that left three people moderately injured and a fourth lightly injured. All four were rushed to the city’s Soroka Medical Center.

In Ashdod, a 70-year-old man was seriously wounded in a hit-and-run accident on Yitzhak Ben Tzvi Street. The incident took place near the police station located on the same road. Paramedics rushed the man to Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan.

And police likely prevented another accident late Friday when they caught a 25-year-old Safed resident who was racing down a narrow Galilee road at 202 kilometers per hour (126 miles per hour). He was arrested and will remain in police custody until a court hearing early next week.

A 56-year-old Tel Mond resident was killed when he fell from his bicycle while riding alongside a riverbed in the Hefer Valley east of Netanya. His wife and another man were with him when he fell. They called the paramedics, who arrived to find the man unconscious and suffering from head trauma. They were unable to resuscitate him.