DEATHS IN HAIFA EXPLOSION

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25450, 23 March 1948, Page 5

DEATHS IN HAIFA EXPLOSION

Six Jews were killed and 26 were injured when a lorry load of explosives blew up in front of a Jewish builders’ workers’ co-operative compound in Haifa. Reuter’s correspondent in Haifa say# that the explosion set on fire and destroyed 16 parked cars and lorries, wrecked 100 yards of road, set on fire two warehouses, and damaged 12 buildings. A witness said that two Arabs in European clothes jumped out of a lorry, which they directed towards a Jiaganah roadblock. The Idrry careered towards the roadblock, but before it reached it, it crashed into a Jewish lorry in a car park between the warehouses. Haganah guards yelled a warning and hundreds of Jews fled into side streets and .alleys. The lorry exploded three minutes later, parts of it being blown to the top of a four-storey building. Debris fell on ships in the harbour. The explosion damaged the sixstorey Jewish trade union building and

» fire gutted the ground floor. Rescue - workers had to lower survivors from x the upper floors with ropes. Jews blew up two houses in Haifa, killing; ana Arab. 3 An expToildfi wrecked a railway • bridge between Acre and Haifa. { About 150 Arabs invaded the Jewish ] suburb of Mekor Haim, blew up two , British ’t?oop« Cat>ed Sfter * a ’ h * iU ‘ , British artillery wu called in to- , day to Stop a two-hour battle between , Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem. The t Arabs allege that Jews firing at an , Arab crowd round the Jaffa Gate , started the trouble. . Arabs who were attacking a Jewish s convoy near Beit Nabala. • Five hundred Arabs later raked with s small arms fire the lorries and cars oi another Jewish convoy. A Jew - was burned to death in a vehicle 1 which was set on fire.