An 11 P.M. to 6 A.M. curfew was proclaimed today by the military authorities for all vehicular traffic outside municipal areas following a night in which fifty simultaneous attacks were made on Palestine’s railway system, nine persons were killed, seven injured and the country’s transport network disruyted.
The attacks, attributed in an official police communique to Jews, were preseded by a time bomb explosion that rocked Jerusalem. The heaviest attack took place at the Lydda junction station, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where a signal box was discharged and a train with three locomotives wrecked by mines.
A heavy explosion took place during the night at the Consolidated Refineries in Haifa, and one body was found later under the rubble. Two police launches are seriously damaged by explosions while at ancher in Haifa port. A third police lunch was sunk at Jaffa one hour later.
The police communique said that “armed uniformed Jews” held up a Lydda-Jerusalem train shortly before midnight and that shots were exchanged. It was later reported that five of the attackers were captured by the police while the others were taken off.
As a result of the disruption of railway traffic, no trains arrived from Egypt today, while inland services were crippled or seriously dislocated. British military spokesmen said that the casualties included one British soldier killed and another wounded; one Palestine policeman killed, and one wounded; six Palestine railway workers killed and six wounded, one of them critically, and several persons not otherwise identified.
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.
