The explosion hit at 11:59 a.m. on a Sunday, in a public parking lot on HaLochamim Street in Holon, a dense residential city just south of Tel Aviv, at the height of the midday rush.
Security camera footage captured the moment: a sharp, violent blast, metal and car parts thrown into the air, then thick black smoke swallowing the vehicles parked nearby, and finally flames consuming what remained of the car. Bystanders fled. Nearby vehicles scrambled away from the scene.
The man inside the car, described by police as approximately 30 years old and known to law enforcement, was found unconscious near the burning wreck by the first paramedics to arrive. Magen David Adom first responders Shalom Ben David and emergency medic Shlomi Vaknin, from the motorcycle unit, reached the scene within minutes.
"We received a report of an explosion, arrived quickly, and saw the car on fire," Ben David said. "The driver was lying near the vehicle, unconscious and suffering multi-system injuries. We provided medical treatment and evacuated him to hospital rapidly, in critical condition."
He did not survive. Despite the medical team's efforts, the man was pronounced dead at the scene.
Large police forces arrived alongside a mobile forensics laboratory and explosives experts, who sealed the area and began collecting evidence. The working assumption, police said, is that a high-powered explosive device had been planted on the vehicle as part of a criminal underworld dispute — a targeted assassination carried out in the middle of a civilian neighborhood in broad daylight.
