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26 Britons Killed As Sternists Blast Troop Train in Retaliation for Jerusalem Bombing

March 1, 1948
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Twenty-six British soldiers were killed today end 50 wounded seriously enough to require hospitalization when a Cairo-Haifa troop train was blown up by three mines near Rehovoth. The Stern Group immediately assumed responsibility for the action, asserting that it was in retaliation for last Sunday’s explosion in Jerusalem in which 54 Jews died.

The mines, set off electrically by extremists in a nearby orange grove, demolished two of three military coaches and derailed and damaged the remainder of the train. A fourth mine failed to explode. The truck was torn up for several hundred yards distance.

About 1,000 refugees intercepted last night aboard the blockade runner “Builders and Fighters” were this afternoon transshipped to a British deportation ferry in Haifa harbor and taken to Cyprus. No incident was reported either during the boarding or transshipping operations.

In serious attacks in all parts of Palestine a total of at least 12 Jews and 15 Arabs met their death this week-end. In Haifa, the Haganah penetrated the heart of the Arab area and blew up a truck loaded with explosives intended for use against the Jews, Five Arab were killed, 32 wounded and the garage in which the vehicle was parked and three adjacent houses were demolished. At Magdiel, near Haifa, six Arabs were killed in an attempt to storm the Jewish village, while in the port city the body of a murdered Jew was found today. One Jew was killed by Arab snipers in Safad and another in Holon.

SIX JEWS DIE IN TEL AVIV BORDER FIGHT; SNIPERS ACTIVE IN JERUSALEM

Six Haganah men were killed on the Tel Aviv-Jaffa border today when a Jewish detachment penetrated an Arab sector in an attempt to upset an offensive for which the Arabs had been preparing for days. The raid was preceded by scattered Arab mortar fire which destroyed at least one house in a Jewish quarter. Near Beth Djan, in the Tel Aviv area, a Jewish house was blown up by a bomb hurled off a speeding Arab truck.

Snipers were active throughout the day in Jerusalem and its environs. At least three Jews fall victim to their bullets and a strong sniper attack on the road leading up Mt. Scopus to the Hadassah Hospital and the Hebrew University was beaten off only after the Jews drew up two armored buses and blasted away at every bullet flash for several hours. Arabs also made a determined attack on the Yemin Moshe quarter of Jerusalem, using automatic weapons and hand grenades. A food convoy nearing Jerusalem was attacked and a Haganah guard was killed, but the convoy fought its way through to the Jewish section of the city, nonetheless.

A special issue of the official Gazette, published yesterday, gives the High Commissioner legal power skin to a dictator over all of Palestine after tomorrow. Today, British military headquarters released a new warning to both Jews and Arabs to the effect that soldiers will fire impartially on all persons involved in shooting incidents, regardless of who precipitated the clash.

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