A refugee vessel with 400 Jews aboard was sighted off the Palestine coast late tonight and four British destroyers went out to intercept her, the Haganah radio reported.
The broadcast said that the name of the ship was “Shivat Zion,” (Return to Zion). It added, without explanation, that the Haganah had found new means of fighting the “illegal White Paper immigration law.”
The underground radio warned that the government was preparing to place the whole country under martial law, adding that “no measures will suppress the Jewish spirit and the fight for a Jewish state will continue.”
Jerusalem was rocked by new explosions shortly before midnight when a military truck convoying a Hadassah ambulance carrying a pregnant woman hit a landmine on the outskirts of the city and a bomb exploded near a home for the aged at the entrance to the city. Three soldiers were injured when the truck blew up. Bombs also exploded in Haifa, but details were not available.
The Sternists announced that they had been responsible for the attacks in Jerusalem, Haifa and Benyamina since the return of the Exodus, and said that they would be “ruthlessly continued.”
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