Jewish Bomb Squad Starts Palestine Riot

United Press, Jerusalem

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Transcribed from the clipping

“JERUSALEM, Palestine, Dec. 23 (UP)—A bomb squad of about 40 members of the Jewish extremist Irgun Zval Leumi organizations destroyed an Arab flour mill in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa no man’s land tonight and set off a melee in which Jews, Arabs and British soldiers and police fired wildly. AT LEAST ONE Arab was reported killed and possibly three. Ten Arabs or more were wounded.

The Irgunists threw nine bombs into the flour mill and set it afire. A high wind spread the flames and the building was destroyed in about 10 minutes. Jew and Arab snipers exchanged fire and a British military and police patrol, in armored cars, opened fire when it was caught between the lines.

THE IRGUNISTS withdrew into Jewish Tel Aviv, eluding the British armored cars which pursued them. Later the Irgunists telephoned newspapers that the flour mill was an Arab sniper center.

There was another general fight in which Arabs, British policemen and reportedly Jews clashed over an open grave in Mount of Olives cemetery just outside the walls of the old city of Jerusalem. The shooting started while undertakers were lowering the body of Robert Stern, 35, a Jewish British correspondent killed Sunday by Arabs, into a grave.”

Context added by this archive

The Irgun telephones its justification to the newspapers after the fact, and the paper prints it as what they said. “Irgun Zval Leumi” is the paper’s spelling.

Cite this clipping

"Jewish Bomb Squad Starts Palestine Riot," Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 24 December 1947, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1947-016. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1947-016