Overview
- The plant in Kiryat Gat suffered an explosion and fire that injured multiple employees, and Soroka Medical Center confirmed a second death Thursday, leaving at least one other victim in serious condition in hospital.
- Police at the scene say one delivery truck disconnected and a second connected during a material transfer before the blast, and investigators currently treat the event as a likely equipment or transfer malfunction with no immediate suspicion of criminal conduct.
- Emergency crews brought the blaze under control, cooled storage tanks, set a roughly 500-meter cordon, and carried out continuous hazardous-materials monitoring to rule out further leaks.
- The Israel Fire and Rescue Authority and hospital briefings identified nitrogen trifluoride, a nonflammable but oxidizing and toxic process gas used in semiconductor cleaning, as involved in the incident and a key focus of safety checks.
- Technical and police teams remain on site to complete risk assessments and a technical probe, and authorities have asked the public to avoid the area while work continues and no wider evacuations were ordered.