The Jewish Agency today started an inquiry into the blasting last night of the building in which the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the English-language Palestine Post had their main offices. The building was still burning today. An official announcement revealed that one woman was killed and about 20 persons injured in the explosion.
More than 300 persons were rendered homeless by the explosion which also destroyed a row of apartment houses in the same street. The damage to all buildings will amount to more than $1,000,000, it was estimated today.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency continued to serve all newspapers in Palestine and the outside world from temporary quarters. The Palestine Post also appeared today, using borrowed presses. The paper published a one-page broadside edition charging editorially that “the outrage was perpetrated by somebody who did not wish the full truth told.”
Reports are gaining currency here that the outrage was perpetrated by members of a fascist gang of Britons serving on the Palestine police force, rather than Arabs on whom the blame was first attached.
Referring to the Agency inquiry into the explosion, a spokesman said that “as yet there is no concrete evidence at ell, no evidence that it was done by Arab terrorists, and not oven the slightest evidence that it was done by Jewish terrorists.”
SIX JEWS, TWO ARABS, ONE BRITON DIE IN DAY’S VIOLENCE
At least nine persons–six Jews, two Arabs and a British soldier–died today in a series of violent incidents throughout Palestine. An additional dozen were wounded.
Although a majority of the dead fell in a fight near the Jaffa sate of the Old City of Jerusalem, the major fighting occurred near Tel Aviv and in the Haifa-Acre district where seven distinct attacks on buses, trucks and cars took place. Sniping and bombing continued throughout the day on the Jaffa-Tel Aviv boundary and the exact casualties are still to be reported. A British soldier on guard in the Salameh quarter of Jaffa was shot dead by an unknown gunman.
At the Jaffa Gata four Jews were killed when a Jewish convoy was fired upon by Arabs. Two Arabs fell as the Baganah replied. Six Arabs were wounded between Acre and Salad by Jews in battle dress and two Jews were killed on a road near Haifa when their car was ambushed. At Yazur, which commando a section of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, the Jews blew up two houses, a leather factory and a pump house during a punitive expedition.
A British military court sentenced five Haganah members to five years imprisonment for carrying arms. They wore arrested while defending the Hatikvah quarter of Tel Aviv from an Arab attack.
The Sternists announced that they had court-martialed, condemned and executed a Jewish woman, Haya Seidenberg of Holon, for “betraying Jewish accretes” to an Arab friend. An official government press release reported that Leah Weinstein, a government employee, was kidnapped by a gang of Arabs last night while en route to work. San was released later, after being searched by an Arab woman.
Dr. Abba Hillel Silver left today by air for the United States, after telling women that he was “enthusiastic” over the morale of the Jewish community in Palestine–particularly the spirit of the country’s youth which, he said, guarantees the establishment of the Jewish state.
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.
