JERUSALEM: Car bombs and gun attacks killed five members of Israel’s Arab minority on Sunday, the latest violence to hit a community that has already recorded 142 deaths this year.

Criminal violence has escalated among Israel’s Arab minority in recent years, where gangs extort residents and business owners for protection and frequently kill those who fail to pay.

In Jaffa, part of the Tel Aviv municipal area, a car bomb killed a man in his 40s, police and emergency services said, while Israeli news reports reported that the blast left the man’s six-year old son injured. “The background is criminal,” the police said. A second car bomb struck in Holon, south of Tel Aviv, severely injuring a man who later died at hospital, the force said.

A man was shot dead and another injured in the Arab-majority town of Taybeh in central Israel, in what the police described as “apparently a family dispute.” Hours later, two more men were gunned down in the nearby town of Qalansawe, emergency service Magen David Adom reported. “A preliminary inquiry indicates that the background to the incident is apparently a family feud,” police said.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2026