Man seriously hurt in Yavne after relative's licensed gun discharged

A young man was seriously injured on Saturday night by a bullet fired accidentally from a family member's licensed weapon in Yavne, a city in central Israel, according to Hebrew-language news outlets. Ynet reported that the injured man, aged 28, was hit at the family's home, and that police suspect his younger brother, aged 21, fired the shot by accident. The brother works as a security guard and held the gun under a licence, Ynet said, adding that police have opened an investigation and that the circumstances are being examined.

Ynet reported that the wounded man was taken to Assuta hospital in Ashdod. News.co.il described the victim as a 20-year-old hurt by an accidental discharge from a legally held firearm belonging to a relative, and said his condition was serious. An earlier Ynet news alert also gave his age as 20 and said police had begun investigating.

Conflicting details on age, condition and hospital

The reports do not agree on several basic points. Ynet's full article gives the injured man's age as 28, while its own initial alert and News.co.il put it at 20. Both Ynet and News.co.il describe his condition as serious.

Separately, Magen David Adom said its emergency call centre for the Ayalon region received a report at 21:43 of a man injured in Yavne. Its medics and paramedics treated a man of about 30 who had injuries to his body, and took him to Kaplan hospital in critical condition while performing resuscitation. N12 carried a similar account, describing a man of about 30 critically injured in Yavne and taken to Kaplan hospital in Rehovot with resuscitation under way.

Neither the Magen David Adom statement nor the N12 item mentions gunfire, a firearm or a family member. The age, the reported condition and the receiving hospital all differ from the Ynet account. The reports do not establish whether they describe the same incident or two separate ones in Yavne on the same night, and this article does not assume either.

Who reported what

Magen David Adom, often shortened to MDA, is Israel's national emergency medical and ambulance service, roughly comparable to an ambulance service combined with a Red Cross society. The public reaches it by dialling 101, and it routinely issues short statements through its spokesperson describing calls it has responded to, the condition of patients and where they were taken. Those statements usually cover the medical response only and do not address the cause of an injury, which falls to the police.

Ynet is the website of the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper group and one of Israel's most widely read news sites. N12 is the news arm of Israel's Channel 12. News.co.il is a Hebrew-language news service that publishes brief updates.

Where Yavne is

Yavne is a city in Israel's central coastal plain, south of the Tel Aviv area. The two hospitals named in the reports serve the surrounding region: Kaplan Medical Center is in neighbouring Rehovot, as N12 noted, and Assuta is in Ashdod, a port city further south along the coast.

Accidental discharge and licensed weapons

The Hebrew term used in several of the reports, pletat kadur, translates literally as the escape of a bullet and is the standard way Israeli media describe an unintended discharge of a firearm. Such incidents are investigated by the Israel Police, which examines how the weapon was handled and whether licensing and storage rules were followed.

Private gun ownership in Israel requires a licence issued by the state, and people working as security guards are commonly authorised to carry a weapon as part of their job. Ynet reported that the brother in this case held his gun under such a licence. None of the reports describes how the gun came to be fired, or where in the home the shooting took place.

What the reports do not say

• Whether the man treated by Magen David Adom and taken to Kaplan is the same person Ynet says was taken to Assuta in Ashdod.
• The injured man's correct age, given variously as 20, 28 and about 30.
• His current condition beyond the initial descriptions of serious or critical.
• How the weapon was discharged, and whether the brother has been questioned, detained or released.
• Whether police have made any statement of their own; the investigation is reported only through the news outlets.
• The names of anyone involved.