Imposed in Tel Aviv; Troops Fire into Crowds; Government Offices Set Afire

A rigid curfew was clamped down on Tel Aviv tonight following the wounding of a number of Jews by British troops who fired into a crowd of demonstrators, ten of whom were hospitalized.

The curfew, which restricts all inhabitants to their homes, will continue for an indefinite period, until the military authorities order it lifted.

At least twenty other Jews were injured here by club-swinging police as demonstrations were held throughout the country during a twelve-hour general strike called to protest the British Government’s statement of policy on Palestine. Several policeman were also hurt.

The troops fired after groups of Jewish youths had set the government district offices here on fire and stoned police who rushed to the scene. The troops tried at first to disperse the crowds by firing into the air but later were ordered to fire directly into the demonstrators.

The youths also broke into the income tax offices and destroyed the files. Some of the records were thrown into the street and burned in a bonfire.

Crowds prevented the voluntary fire brigade from extinguishing the fire in the district offices. Later the Light Industries offices were also set afire and explosions were heard inside. Military lorries, speeding through the streets of the city, were stoned.

The demonstrations continued despite the shooting. Armored cars were patrolling the streets of Tel Aviv tonight, while loud speakers mounted on automobiles ordered people to go home.

ALL QUIET IN JERUSALEM; U.S. SOLDIER INJURED IN CLASH WITH ARABS

All was quiet in Jerusalem tonight, but military police were calling troops from theatres and other places of amusement and sending them back to barracks.

Police report that marauding Arabs exchanged shots with the armed crew of a British-owned truck on the Jerusalem-Jericho road. One United States sergeant and a passenger were slightly injured by glass splinters.

Arab shepherds grazing their flocks on a Jewish settlement near Haifa were involved in a clash with Jewish youths, the police also reported. One Arab and a Palestinian constable were slightly injured.

The general stoppage of work proclaimed by the Jewish National Council started exactly at noon. All workers left their machines and shops and offices were closed. A self-imposed curfew ordered yesterday was revoked by the Jewish leaders in order to allow the Jews to give vent to their feelings by participating in demonstrations and protest meetings.

Just before the strike began, 600 students of the Hebrew University held a meeting in Jerusalem at which they passed a resolution stating that they were “ready to be called cut at any moment by the national institutions to fight for the elementary rights of the Jewish people.” The meeting charged that “the treacherous doclaration by the mandatory power is a scheme designad to strangle the Zionist movement and the physical and cultural life of the Jews in exile.” The resolution emphasized that “there is no power on earth that can prevent us from returning to the Jewish homeland and from building it.”

A call to the Jews in Palestine and abread to begin active resistance “against the policy of condemning the Jewish national effort in Palestine to stagnation” was broadcast in the afternoon by the secret Jewish radio station.

The broadcast, attacking Pevin’s “great betrayal,” said, “What Hitler did in his murderous blitz is now being repeated in the form of slow, grinding political policy by the democracies. We are being condemned to live in an intolerable ghetto so as not to deprive Europe of its Jewish talents. The new proposals are anti-Jewish and in(##). This land is ours to work in, to build, to create and to defend. This treachery must not stand. It must not be maintained.”