Suspected gangland hit in Haifa leaves one dead, 2 injured

According to investigators, a motorcyclist driving along Hamaginim Boulevard in Haifa pulled up alongside a vehicle carrying three people and opened fire.

By BEN HARTMAN
Scene of shooting in Haifa (photo credit: HATZALAH UNITED CARMEL)
Scene of shooting in Haifa
(photo credit: HATZALAH UNITED CARMEL)
A Haifa man known to police was shot dead in broad daylight in Haifa on Thursday in what police say is part of a feud between warring underworld figures in the northern city.
The shooting on Hameginim Street also left two passengers in the man’s vehicle moderately wounded. Paramedics who arrived at the scene said they found all three men lying on the pavement, with the two wounded men conscious and suffering from gunshot wounds to their lower extremities.
Police said the shooter approached the vehicle on a motorcycle, opened fire, and fled. They set up roadblocks in the area but failed to make an arrest.
Haifa police chief Cmdr. Avi Edri said of the killing that, “an incident like this, in the middle of Haifa in the middle of the day, is something we cannot accept.”
The murder was the latest in a series of underworld attacks in Israeli cities this week. On Sunday, on Hapalmah Street in a residential area of Givatayim, a car bomb blew up and wounded four men. One of the victims is a local resident well known to police and the organized crime world, and the blast that targeted him happened not far from an elementary school and a park.
Thursday’s murder in Haifa also came just a few days after a drive-by shooting in Eilat left three children aged eight to 15 wounded in a botched underworld hit Saturday night outside a mall in the southern city.
The children were sitting inside an SUV when assailants on a motorcycle opened fire.
All three are the children of an underworld figure from Migdal Ha’emek named Niv Alush, and it is believed that the shooting was a botched attempt on his life. That same night, shots were fired at the Nahariya home of reputed mob figure Michael Mor, a rival of Alush. The next morning, Alush was arrested by police on suspicion of shooting at the house as an act of revenge for the near-killing of his children.