British Troops Rescue From Arabs Nearly Two Hundred Jews Who Were Ambushed

Wanganui Chronicle, 30 March 1948, Page 5

British Troops Rescue From Arabs Nearly Two Hundred Jews Who Were Ambushed

(N.Z.P.A,—Copyright.) Received 11.15 p.m. LONDON, March 29 British troops have succeeded in rescuing 180 Jews who had been ambushed by a large force of Arabs in a village near Bethlehem. It was reported yesterday that the British had arranged a truce between the 1200 Arabs, who were attacking the village, and the besieged Jews, survivors from an ill-fated eonvov of 50 lorries.

An official announcement said that 250 Arabs killed 42 Jews in the convoy, which they ambushed on its way back from the Hebron Hills to Jerusalem. The Jews took refuge in a village nearby and Jewish planes took a hand in bombing Arab positions British troops were rushed in to quell the disturbance.

British Headquarters announced that it arranged a truce and then set about rescuing the surrounded Jews. British troops then brought out alive 180 Jews, more than 10 of them women. Inside the bullet-pitted house where the main stand was made, the troops found four dead Jews and 45 wounded women. The bodies of the other men lay in the roadway. Hundreds of Arabs streamed down from the hills during the truce and while the British troops were extricating the Jews the Arabs closed in to collect loot the Jews had left—a number of lorries and armoured cars and a pile of rifles, machine-guns, and ammunition. The Arabs swarmed ove» the lorries while troops were still removing injured Jews from a house. It was feared- at one time that the Arabs would get out of control. Troops held them oft with fixed bayonets. Jewish planes at one stage bombed the Arabs. The Haganah leader told a Reuter correspondent that the convoy began with 35 lorries and 14 armoured cars. The Arabs destroyed all but eight lorries and six armoured cars, which the Jews formed into a protective barrier around the house. Prior to the truce the survivors of the Jewish convoy continued to make a last ditch stand. There was a temporary cessation in the firing when about 200 British troops, after negotiating Arab road blocks at 300 yard intervals from Bethlehem, reached the scene. The British troops took up a position one and a half miles from the beseiged Jews but did not intervene. The Arabs warned the British that they would attack them if they tried to help the Jews.

The truce was arranged after Palestine’s Chief Rabbi, Dr. Isaac Herzog, appealed to the British Army to save the besieged Jews. Jewesses thronged the Jewish Agency’s offices in Jerusalem, seeking news of next-of-kin who were drivers or escorts in the convoy. An Associated Press correspondent reports that Royal Artillery 25 pounders broke up an Arab attack on a Jewish convoy eas.t of Nahariah, in northern Palestine. The Haganah High Command claimed that Haganah squads, while raiding the Arab village of Sandala, north Palestine, killed 30 Arabs who arrived as reinforcements from a nearby village. Jews had previously blown up ten houses in Sandala.