Man stabbed to death in Afula fight

Victim's 18-year-old relative seriously wounded in the brawl on Alozoroff Street; 5 suspects arrested.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
In the latest in a series of violent incidents across the country in recent weeks, 21-year-old Muhammad Shalabi was stabbed to death on Thursday night in a fight that broke out between several young people in Afula. Shalabi's 18-year-old relative was seriously wounded in the incident on Alozoroff Street. The two managed to get to Afula's Haemek Hospital, but the 21-year-old, from the Sulam village in the Amakim district, succumbed to his wounds. Police were investigating the case and arrested five people suspected of involvement in the brawl. On Wednesday, in a special Knesset plenum discussion initiated by Kadima to address the rising wave of violence in Israel, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch expressed strong opposition to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's announcement on setting up municipal police forces throughout the country. Netanyahu repeated his municipal policing plan in a meeting Monday, when he also said that Aharonovitch and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz would travel abroad in order to learn how to deal with the rising wave of violence in Israel. Meanwhile, in a blow to attempts to get tougher on violent crime, a media leak forced the Tel Aviv District Court on Thursday to release to house arrest an 18-year-old man from Givatayim accused of stabbing a teenager who refused to give him a cigarette. The suspect was released due to the fact that police failed to issue a ban on publishing his photograph. By the time he was supposed to appear in a police lineup, his identity had been revealed. The identifying witness, who was interviewed in the media, said she had seen the photo of the accused several hours before she identified him in the lineup.