Police: TA car bombing most likely a 'work accident'

Explosion that injured two brothers in south Tel Aviv likely not an attempted mob hit as police originally suspected.

By BEN HARTMAN
Tel Aviv car bomb 390 (photo credit: BEN HARTMAN)
Tel Aviv car bomb 390
(photo credit: BEN HARTMAN)
A car bombing that injured two brothers in south Tel Aviv on Saturday night was most likely a “work accident,” and not an attempted underworld hit on the two brothers, Tel Aviv police said on Monday.
Though the Yiftach sub-district’s investigation of the bombing on Ben-Tzvi Street is still not complete, an official with the Tel Aviv district said Monday that as the investigation continues, there is increasing reason to believe that the bomb was put in the car by brothers Shaul and Yaniv Peretz before the explosion, and they were taking it to a different location to use in a hit on a rival.
On Sunday night, police arrested a friend of the brothers who witnesses said was in the car moments before it exploded. The witnesses said the third man got out of the car with the brothers when they stopped at a kiosk on Ben-Tzvi, but stayed behind in the store while the brothers returned to the car. The vehicle exploded while the man was inside the store, and he then fled the scene on foot.
Though they believe the bombing was most likely accidental, police are also weighing the possibility that the friend planted the bomb in the car and stayed behind in the kiosk while he telephoned someone else to detonate the explosives.
Shaul, 27, was moderately wounded and Yaniv, 30, was lightly hurt in the explosion, which turned their car into a charred wreck and sent chunks of the vehicle flying dozens of meters in every direction – including a large chunk of the windshield that landed nearly a block away in an alleyway.
The bombing took place almost exactly a month since mobster Nissim Alperon narrowly escaped death as his sedan exploded in an attempted hit on Menachem Begin Street in Tel Aviv on January 10. The explosion, which injured seven passersby, was the eighth attempt on Alperon’s life in the past 12 years.