The toll from Wednesday's explosion at Intel's manufacturing facility in Kiryat Gat rose to two on Thursday, after a 49-year-old man succumbed to his injuries at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. He had been evacuated from the site in serious condition with multiple injuries and died despite extended resuscitation efforts.
A gas technician working at the facility was pronounced dead on Wednesday after being critically wounded in the blast. A third man, in his twenties, remains in serious condition in Soroka's intensive care unit, sedated and on a ventilator as doctors monitor his recovery.
What Investigators Believe Happened
Police suspect the explosion was triggered by a gas cylinder that detonated during the unloading of delivery trucks at the southern Israeli plant. According to Kiryat Gat police commander Shai Aleli, one truck had finished unloading material into storage tanks and disconnected, and a second truck had just connected when the blast occurred. "We understand there was a malfunction," Aleli said, adding that investigators have not yet established whether negligence or criminal conduct played a role.
Establishing the precise mechanical or procedural failure behind such an incident typically requires forensic examination of the cylinder, the transfer equipment, and the facility's safety protocols for handling pressurized industrial gases - a process that can take weeks even when there is no indication of foul play.
The Hazard Posed by Nitrogen Trifluoride
The explosion also triggered a fire and a leak of nitrogen trifluoride, a gas widely used in semiconductor manufacturing to clean chemical vapor deposition chambers during chip production. NF₃ is not flammable, but it is highly toxic if inhaled, and exposure can cause severe respiratory and systemic harm. Its use is common across the chip industry precisely because it etches away residue efficiently, but that same reactivity makes safe storage, transport, and handling a persistent operational concern for manufacturers.
Hazardous materials teams carried out continuous air monitoring and risk assessments in the hours following the blast to determine whether the surrounding population faced exposure risk. Authorities later confirmed that the threat to nearby residents had passed, though the facility itself remained the focus of an active safety and criminal investigation.
A Reminder of Industrial Risk in High-Tech Manufacturing
Semiconductor fabrication is often associated with clean rooms and precision engineering, but it depends heavily on an industrial supply chain involving large volumes of pressurized and toxic gases, acids, and solvents delivered by truck and stored on-site. Incidents like the one in Kiryat Gat underscore that the sector carries genuine physical safety risks for workers who manage logistics, loading, and chemical transfer, even when the end product is a microchip rather than heavy machinery.
The Kiryat Gat site is one of Intel's larger production facilities outside the United States, and incidents affecting its operations draw close attention given the plant's role in the company's global manufacturing network. For now, the investigation into what caused the malfunction continues, with authorities withholding judgment on culpability until technical and forensic findings are complete.