An Israeli man was killed when a car exploded in Tel Aviv on Sunday afternoon, police said.
The vehicle was inside a parking lot on the busy La Guardia street when it burst into flames.
A Magen David Adom rescue service paramedic said the victim sustained severe injuries from the explosion and was pronounced dead at the scene after unsuccessful resuscitation attempts.
Police said the incident was being investigated, though it appeared to be an organized crime-related assassination and not a terror attack.
The identity of the victim was not immediately released.
There have been several underworld car bombings in Tel Aviv and surrounding cities in the last several years, raising fears among an Israeli populace already on edge due to the year-long spate of terror attacks.
In March, Avner Mayo, a former Tel Aviv crime boss turned state’s witness, was killed in a car bombing, becoming the second person connected to the state witness program to be murdered within a week.
חשד לחיסול בעולם התחתון: בת”א נהרג אדם בפיצוץ רכבו בחניון ברחוב לה גווארדיה, סמוך למרכז מסחרי. האיש מת במקום @lirankog pic.twitter.com/AiUCDFD9Mm
— רשת ב (@ReshetBet) October 16, 2016
Mayo was set to testify in a 2012 double-murder trial involving members of the Alperon crime family. Last year he was involved in bringing charges against leaders of the Musli crime organization which claimed he owed them money, Channel 2 reported at the time.
Days earlier, a 30-year-old Israeli woman was shot dead in front of her three young children on Beersheba’s Jerusalem Boulevard in a criminal underworld slaying.
Police said the victim was the wife of an imprisoned member of a criminal organization who testified in court against his former organization.
In January, three people were injured, two of them seriously, when a car exploded and burst into flames in a Tel Aviv suburb in a suspected underworld hit attempt.
The injured included Ben Cohen, a senior figure in the crime organization headed by Amir Mulner, as well as his personal security guard. Two passersby were also lightly hurt in the blast, which rocked roads near the adjacent Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
During 2015 police made a series of arrests involving dozens of members of crime organizations across the country in what was described as one of the biggest crackdowns on organized crime in Israeli history.
