A Middle Eastern crime boss has been rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries after being shot in the driveway of his Melbourne home.
Fadi Haddara, 48, was ambushed while in his car outside his home on Marigold Avenue in Altona North just before 8pm on Sunday, in what police said was a targeted shooting.
Gangland sources told Outlaw Media that Haddara was shot in the mouth and chest, and that the shooting was believed to be linked to an incident in the United Arab Emirates last month.
Police set up a crime scene, and said officers from the Major Crime Scene Unit will attend to process the scene in the morning.
Haddara, who came to Australia from Lebanon as a child and has spent time in jail for firearms offences, once controlled Melbourne’s illegal tobacco trade before being pushed out by Iraqi gangster Kazem Hamad during the city’s tobacco wars.
Hamad was sentenced to life in jail for drug trafficking by an Iraqi court last month, but his gang has remained active and is believed to be behind a series of shootings and firebombings in recent months.
Haddara and the gang that bears his name were targeted multiple times in March, including in a drive-by shooting at a shisha bar in the same suburb, and in an arson attack on a gelato shop in Williamstown.
Header image: Left, Fadi Haddara. Right, Haddara with his brother Waleed, left, and crime figure Sam Abdulrahim, right, who was shot dead in January last year (Instagram).
