Wave of Violence in Arab Israeli Communities Continues: 5 Family Members Shot Dead in Bedouin Village
Five family members were killed on Wednesday in a shooting in an Arab village in northern Israel.
The mass shooting may have been a revenge attack after a 50-year-old Arab Israeli man was shot dead in his car in Haifa.
The shootings were the latest in a wave of violence sweeping through Arab communities across the country.
Israeli police said in a statement that five people were shot dead in a house in Basmat Tab’un, a Bedouin town around 10 miles southeast of Haifa. The victims were identified by Israel’s state-owned Kan TV as two teenage brothers, a woman in her 40s and her 25-year-old son, and another male relative.
The woman’s husband, a 49-year-old man, was moderately injured and has been taken to a local hospital.
The shooter or shooters fled the scene, prompting searches by the Israeli security forces.
Israeli police chief Yaakov Shabtai told reporters, “Israeli police will do everything we can to find the killers.”
Previous incidents of such shootings have often revolved around conflicts between organized crime syndicates.
At least 188 individuals from the Arab community in Israel have been killed in violence since the beginning of 2023, according to the Abraham Initiatives, a group advocating for the Arab minority in Israel.
