Jews Use P.O. Van To Plant Bombs

Northern Advocate, 26 April 1947, Page 5

Jews Use P.O. Van To Plant Bombs

FOUR BRITISH POLI CEMEN KILLED.

(Received 11.30 a.m.) JERUSALEM, April 25. FOUR British policemen were killed and six others injured in an explosion in a police billet at Sarona, near Tel Aviv. Two" men drove a van containing bombs into the billet. Two more bombs were thrown outside the billet while rescuers were digging for the missing policemen under the debris.

The terrorists used two bombs of a new type, the most powerful ever used in Palestine. The driver of the van wore a police uniform. VAN SEARCHED The official version of the Sarona explosion is that eight armed men held up a post office van at Tel Aviv and tied up the driver and a passenger, who some time later managed to free themselves. Meanwhile two of the gang drove the van to Sarona where a corporal at the billet gate was suspicious and called the sergeant, who searched the van and found only a ladder and two coils of wire, which, the men said, were for repair work. After scrutinising the men’s passes the guard permitted the van to enter. A few minutes later the men returned to the gate, carrying the ladder and wire, saying they were going outside to mend the telephone wires. They were not seen again. Ninety seconds later the van blew up, destroying the orderly room and telephone exchange. KIDNAPPINGS FEARED It obliterated all of the van but the rear axle, demolished reinforced concrete buildings, tore off parts of the roofs of adjoining buildings and shattered windows blocks away. The camp was one of the heaviest guarded in Palestine, with a triple barbed-wire fence and a cordon of Welsh Guards. ■ The police today removed a mine from a bridge on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Five armed Jews raided Park Hotel. Tel Aviv, last night, and kidnapped a British businessman, Mr Morris Collins, but released him later when they found out that he was Jewish. News of Mr Collins’ kidnapping wds not announced until orders were issued forbidding British civilians to move outside security zones without strong escorts. The authorities are apparently expecting the terrorists soon to make serious attempts to kidnap Britons. Mines exploded along the road at the foot of"the Mount of Olives as military vehicles passed along. TERRORISTS’ THREAT The Irgun Zvai Leumi radio said that British hangings of “prisoners of war” enabled the organisation to adopt a “new Code” under which British troops and police caught carrying arms would be “tried” on the spot by the Irgun Zvai Leumi at a “field general court-martial” with no right of appeal. British troops and police would also be liable to be tried as “members of an illegal organisation in the Jewish homeland.” Those convicted would be executed on the spot either by shooting or hanging. Three armed men, believed to be Jews, entered the Farmers’ Bank this morning at Affulah, in the north of Palestine. They held up a clerk and stole £550 in cash before escaping in a motor car.