Government forces battled Arab terrorist bands in many parts of the country today, inflicting heavy casualties, while Arab attacks caused the death of a Jew and injuries to several others.
While Royal Air Force planes circled above, troops surrounded and intensively searched Sira, near Tulkarem, uncovering a quantity of arms and arresting 31 Arab villagers. A band of 40 heavily attacked Ramat Yochanan, resulting in the summoning of troops, who pursued the terrorists to Saasa, where two bandsmen were found dead and many blood stains indicating more casualties. The village of 80 families was deserted, except for the old Mukhtar (village chief), two women and a child.
Organized guerilla warfare continued mainly in north Palestine, while bombings and individual attacks were recorded in the Sharon plain and hills of Judea. Dahlia Tschernowitz, daughter of the well-known journalist, Jacob Tschernowitz, was seriously injured when stoned while riding to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in a taxicab with her cousin, Miriam Ranovsky, daughter of the New York theologian, Prof. Chaim Tschernowitz, and her brother, Jacob Tschernowitz.
A Jewish Public Works Department foreman, Israel Budjerano, 56, was shot and fatally wounded while passing the Manshieh quarter of Tel Aviv. His assailant escaped. a land mine exploded near the Ayelet Hashachar colony under an armored car convoying workers to the northern frontier fence, under construction. There were no casualties.
A band attacked four truckloads of workers en route to Jerusalem from the Dead Sea, slightly injuring Zila Shut, 21. A bomb exploded in Haifa, seriously injuring two Arabs. Two bombs were discovered hidden in the sacks of Arabs bringing vegetables to the Jewish market in the Machine Yehuda quarter of Jerusalem. A land mine exploded on the Tel Aviv-Haifa road, slightly injuring an Arab truck driver and damaging a Tnuvah Dairy truck.
A band attacked a police patrol near Bethlehem, wounding five Arab constables, one of them seriously, and stealing their uniforms and rifles. Eight hundred Arab workers building a military road in the Nablus-Tulkarem-Jenin “terror triangle” went on strike after threats by Arab bands. Haifa’s oldest Ashkenazi synagogue. at Nahlat Yitzhak, was destroyed by incendiary fire, but holy books and scrolls were rescued.
a caravan of 21 Palestine Potash Co. trucks, with only six of the drivers licensed to carry arms, was stopped by a barricade of stones in the middle of which was a land mine, en route to Jerusalem from the Dead Sea. a band of 40 Arabs concealed on the hillside opened fire. The six armed drivers held them off for half an hour until police and troops arrived, forcing the band to retreat with troops in pursuit.
Isaac Ben-Zvi, president of the Jewish national Council, today interviewed Sydney Moody, Acting Chief Government Secretary, regarding the security question.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
