Police say explosion on Monday night was not an assassination attempt, local sources identify the man as Tzion Yana.
By BEN HARTMANPolice generic in english crime scene 370(photo credit: REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar)
An explosion that shook an Ashkelon neighborhood last night was caused by a “work accident” linked to a local criminal, Lachish subdistrict police said Tuesday.They added that the death was not the result of an attempted assassination of the victim, who was pronounced dead at the scene around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning.The blast was initially thought to be a rocket strike – not uncommon in the city which lies only a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip.Though police wouldn’t confirm the identity of the victim, sources in Ashkelon named him as Tzion Yana, a local known to police, but not considered a major target of their investigations in the Lachish subdistrict.It is unclear if he is the same Tzion Yana who in 2009 was arrested for planting an explosives device outside a business in Kiryat Gat as part of a feud between two rival tombstone manufacturers in the Negev city.Police, however, specified that neither the victim nor the incident are related to the ongoing crime war in the south – which saw the Magidish crime family associates try to acquire a LAW missile earlier this month to use in an attempt on southern kingpin Shalom Domrani.
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