Four people have been confirmed dead and eight others injured after a car exploded near two stores on Herzl Street in Ramle on Thursday afternoon. The explosion triggered a fire that quickly spread to nearby shops.

The explosion was first reported at 16:44 local time when MDA’s emergency call center received a report about a car that had exploded while parked in a residential area. In response, multiple MDA teams and ambulances were immediately dispatched to the scene, with the first team arriving within two minutes.

MDA personnel treated 12 victims at the scene and transported them to Shamir Medical Center and Kaplan Medical Center. Among the injured, five were in critical condition after suffering from severe smoke inhalation. These included a 50-year-old woman, a 15-year-old girl, a 10-year-old boy, a 5-year-old girl, and a 1-month-old infant. Despite continued resuscitation efforts, four of the critically injured victims—three children and the adult—were pronounced dead by 8:00 p.m. local time.

MDA EMT Benny Cohen, who was among the first responders, described the chaotic scene: “I arrived to find a large commotion around a car that had exploded and caught fire. Several passersby were injured by the blast and shrapnel.” Cohen noted that the fire quickly spread to a nearby store, trapping people inside. Firefighters later rescued those trapped in the store and residential apartments above, but many were unconscious.

MDA paramedic Liat Cohen said: “This is a very severe incident. Our teams treated people with moderate and mild injuries from shrapnel and blunt trauma and transported them to the hospital. During the firefighting efforts, we rescued five unconscious victims from the store and nearby apartments.”

In the aftermath of the tragedy, tensions ran high outside Shamir Medical Center, where fights broke out among family members of the victims. Police intervened, arresting three residents of Ramle for disrupting public order and assaulting officers.

Investigations into the cause of the explosion are ongoing, as authorities work to determine the full circumstances behind the deadly incident.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)