DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates said Monday that police have arrested three Uzbek nationals over the murder of an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi.

The statement from the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs did not provide a motive for Zvi Kogan’s murder.

Kogan, 28, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who went missing on Thursday, ran a kosher supermarket in the futuristic city of Dubai, where Israelis have flocked for trade and tourism since the two countries forged diplomatic ties in the 2020 Abraham Accords.

The agreement endures through more than a year of rising regional tensions, sparked by Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. But Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive in Gaza and invasion of Lebanon, after months of fighting with the militant group Hezbollah, have fueled anger among Emiratis, Arab nationals and others living in the UAE.

The Interior Ministry statement identified the three men as Olimpi Tohirovic, 28, Mahmoud John Abdul Rahim 28, and Azizi Kamilovic, 33. State news agency WAM distributed images of the three men, their faces blurred. It was not said whether charges had been filed against the men.

It was not immediately clear whether the three men had lawyers in the UAE, an autocratically ruled nation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula. The Uzbek consulate in Dubai did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arrests.

Israeli media reports, citing unnamed security officials, claimed that Uzbeks were involved in Kogan’s killing. Uzbeks have previously been enlisted in Iranian plots against dissidents and others.

Iran, which backs Hamas and Hezbollah, has also threatened reprisals against Israel following a wave of airstrikes Israel carried out in October in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack. The Iranian embassy in Abu Dhabi denied that Tehran was involved in the rabbi’s killing.

Although the UAE statement did not mention Iran, Iranian intelligence services have carried out kidnappings in the UAE in the past.

Western officials believe Iran is conducting intelligence operations in the UAE and monitoring the hundreds of thousands of Iranians living across the country.

Iran is suspected of kidnapping and later killing British-Iranian national Abbas Yazdi in Dubai in 2013, although Tehran has denied involvement. Iran also kidnapped Iranian-German national Jamshid Sharmahd from Dubai in 2020 and brought him back to Tehran, where he was executed in October.

Rimon Market, a kosher supermarket Kogan managed on Dubai’s busy Al Wasl Road, was closed on Sunday. As wars roiled the region, the store was the target of online protests by supporters of the Palestinians. Mezuzahs on the front and back doors of the market appeared to have been ripped off when an Associated Press journalist passed by.

Kogan’s wife, Rivky, a US citizen who lived with him in the UAE, is the niece of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, who was killed in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

In a statement Sunday, US National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett called Kogan’s killing “a heinous crime against all those who stand for peace, tolerance and coexistence.”

“We condemn in the strongest terms the murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan in the UAE and our prayers are with his family, the Chabad-Lubavitch community, the broader Jewish community and all who mourn his loss,” Savett said.