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Jews Repulse New Invasion of Palestine by Arabs from Lebanon; Four Jews Killed

January 21, 1948
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A five-hour attack on a Jewish settlement in northern Palestine by a bend of some 200 Arabs who crossed the frontier from Lebanon ?s beaten off today by a Haganah guard unit and the settlers.

The raid, the second invasion of Palestine within the past few weeks, came ?ortly after dawn and opened with the Arabs encircling the settlement of Yechiam, miles east of Nahariya. The guerrillas, reported to be headed by Iraqi army officers, need machine guns and mortars. A Haganah source said that two former German officers were among the raiders.

For some two hours the Haganah held advance defense positions and then counterattacked when it seemed as though the raiders were short of ammunition.The Jews ?ere thrown back and then retreated to the perimeter of the settlement. A second counterattack failed, but a third, in the form of a pincers movement, sent the Arabs rushing back toward the border in confusion. The battle cost the defenders four ?ead and five wounded. There are no figures immediately available concerning Arab ?osses.

Haganah scouts have spotted another Arab force of some 450 men concentrated ?n the Palestinian side of the border at Hurfeish. They are apparently waiting for arrival of 300 men being mobilized in Lebanon before opening a full-scale attempt destroy all Jewish settlements in northwest Palestine.

ANOTHER AMERICAN JEW KILLED, EXPLOSION IN OMAR MOSQUE KILLS FIVE ARABS

An American Jew, Dov Seligman, 25, was killed by Arab snipers today while ?wing a field near Tira. The other three men, with the aid of a hastily summoned ?ty of settlers from a nearby Hashomer Hatzair colony, chased the snipers off. A ?ond Jew was severely wounded in an attack on another Hashomer Hatzair agricultural settlement, Kfar Kisch. Seligman was formerly a resident of the Bronx, New York. In ?fa, Hanan Flach, a Jew, was killed by an Arab Legionnaire.

One Jew was killed, a second wounded and a British soldier was wounded in Jerusalem in a fight which started between Arabs and Jews. A British armored convoy ?corted a Jewish field ambulance unit, consisting of three doctors and a number of ?ical orderlies, into the encircled Jewish quarter of the Old City where they will main until the Arab siege is lifted. An arms cache in the Omar Mosque, the most ?vared Moslem temple in Jerusalem, last night killed, five Arabs and wounded twelve ?hers.

Sniping by Arabs was resumed in the Sheikh Jarach quarter of this city this morning after a night of relative quiet which followed constant firing all of yesterday. This morning several Jews in the neighboring Jewish section were wounded and could not be given first aid for several hours because the snipers fired at a Red ?gen David ambulance. Yesterday one Jewish woman and an Arab sniper were killed and several Jews were wounded.

The Haganah last night blasted a three-story house in Lifta, a Jerusalem sub?b, which was serving as a base for Arab raiders. Three more buildings used to ?use Arab fighters were blasted in Bet Dajan, while at Tamara, near Acre, another ?ab base was destroyed. Here, the Arabs lost three men and the Haganah, two. The Jewish militia insisted that despite a government estimate of three Arabs killed in another Jewish raid yesterday on Tamara, the number of dead was actually 25.

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