Arab terrorists this week-end turned their fire on British officials in Palestine, killing two police sergeants and a prison officer, while other attacks took the lives of two Jews and two Arabs.
Sergeant Willis of the British constabulary, riding in an Arab bus bound for Jenin from Nablus, was killed by an Arab passenger riding behind him, said to be a band leader wanted by the police, who stopped the vehicle, ordered Sergeant Willis to walk out with his hands up, then disarmed him and fired four shots at him with the sergeant’s own revolver
The Arab pinned a Label to the corpse which declared: “This is the first Englishman killed for the Arabs executed at acre. Band headquarters have decided to kill a number of Englishmen equal to that of the executed Arabs.” More than a dozen Arab terrorists have been hanged at acre prison in the past year under military court sentence.
Further attacks on Britons followed swiftly. Officer Dayeth, attached to Nur-es-Shem prison, was fired upon near Tulkarem as he rode to Tel Aviv with his wife, who was slightly injured and was removed to Hadassah hospital. An Arab band ambushed a three-man police patrol near Herdera, killing a sergeant and slightly wounding a constable.
Assaults on Jews also continued. A worker in the Habaria orange grove near Hedera, Isaac Rosenberg, was fired upon and seriously wounded by Arabs. As Jewish Ghaffir (auxiliary police) pursued the band unsuccessfully for two hours, three Arabs entered the Ghaffir station at Maretz in the same vicinity, killing one, Menachem Averbuch, and seriously wounding another, zvi Pinchas. Joseph Yehezkiel, 37, was seriously wounded when a Palestine Potash Co. truck he was driving to Jerusalem was heavily fired upon.
Another Jew, Joseph Novik, 49, died in Haifa of wounds received on July 25 in an attack by an Arab mob. A Sephardic Jew, Jacob Gigi, 55, was stabbed in the back and seriously wounded while passing an Arab cafe in Jerusalem’s Old City quarter. A large band was reported concentrated in the upper Galilee, attacking the Jewish settlements of Hittin, Mizpah, Sejera, Kineret and the Kiriat Shmuel quarter of Tiberias, but Jewish Ghaffir repulsed all the attacks.
A 14-year-old boy, Nissim Cohen, was seriously injured while sitting in his house with his family when the splinter from a bomb hurled into Tel Aviv from Jaffa penetrated the room. Further bombings were prevented by police, who seized three bombs in a canoe on the Tiberias waterfront, arresting the Arab occupants. In the Machine Yehuda Jewish market in Jerusalem, two Arabs were arrested, one with a licensed revolver and the second with a bomb.
Arabs also suffered in the continuing disorders. An armed Arab entered the Moledet settlement near Petach Tikvah and was killed when a bomb which he threw exploded prematurely. Terrorists entered the home of an Arab carpenter in Acre whom they believed to be a police informer and shot him dead. The third Arab Ghaffir in a week was attacked. He was stabbed and his rifle was stolen en route to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Two Arab street cleaners were wounded, one of them seriously, when they were fired upon while working in the Manshieh quarter near the Tel Aviv-Jaffa road.
A band using machine-guns was driven off by settlers at kfar Azar near Petach Tikvah. No casualties were reported among the colonists. M. Dabansky, Palestine manager of the Lot (Polish) Airlines, two pilots and two mechanics were fired upon near the Arab village of Yahudia while motoring from the Lydda airdrome to Tel Aviv. Dabansky asked the Polish consul to make representations to the government regarding the attack.
Mayor Israel Rokach of Tel Aviv stated that unknown persons had three times within a half hour knocked at the door of his residence on Rothschild Boulevard in the center of the city and had not replied to the question: “Who is there?” He telephoned the police, who searched the vicinity and believed they saw a man escaping. he denied exaggerated reports that an attempt had been made on his life.
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