Police said Tuesday that an elderly foreign national was killed during a suspected mugging in Tel Aviv.
An Eritrean national was arrested as a suspect.
EMTs were called to the scene on Hanoch Street in south Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood at 5:41 a.m. and attempted to resuscitate the man, who had injuries to his face, the Magen David Adom emergency service said in a statement.
Cops launched a manhunt in the area and arrested the suspect a short time later, police said. He was taken in for questioning.
According to Hebrew media reports, the victim had been bludgeoned with a rock, apparently during a mugging in which his phone was stolen. The suspect then tried to sell the stolen phone, Channel 13 reported.
Tel Aviv police chief Haim Sargrof and other top police officials visited the scene following the killing.
Violent street crime is fairly rare in Israel, though residents of working class neighborhoods in southern Tel Aviv have for years complained of rising lawlessness, with some blaming the arrival of thousands of African and Sudanese migrants.
A string of incidents in recent years has brought attention to the roughly 20,000 Eritreans who are living in Israel after entering illegally before the completion of a barrier along the Egyptian border in 2012.
Last August, two men were killed and five others injured in a street brawl in south Tel Aviv between Eritrean migrants, in what police at the time said was apparently part of an ongoing dispute between groups supporting or opposing the regime in Eritrea.
A month earlier a person was killed and another seriously injured in a violent brawl that broke out between migrants in south Tel Aviv.
In September 2023, at least 170 people were hurt — including police officers — in major clashes in the city.
Various Israeli governments have taken a series of measures — some of which were blocked by the courts — to encourage the migrants, many of whom are seeking asylum due to war and oppression in their home country, to leave.
