47 Are Killed In Bitter Riot at Haifa Refinery

36 Jews, 11 Arabs Slain; Tossing of Bomb Starts Clash

By the Associated Press, Jerusalem

47 Are Killed In Bitter Riot at Haifa Refinery — Evening Star, 30 December 1947 — Evening Star · Washington, District of Columbia · 30 December 1947

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Transcribed from the clipping

“JERUSALEM, Dec. 30.—The bitterest rioting since the United Nations decided to partition Palestine erupted today in the Consolidated refinery at Haifa, where 36 Jews and 11 Arabs were killed. Bloody fighting among about 1,800 Arabs and 400 Jews followed the bombing of a line of 100 Arabs before the employment office. At least 14 Jews and 47 Arabs were wounded.

A Haifa informant said the bomb was thrown from a passing Jewish taxi, which sped away, covering its escape with gunfire. Most of the Arabs apparently were killed by the bomb, which shattered two days of quiet in the port city and set off reprisal attacks by Arabs on Jewish workers in the large refinery on the northern outskirts of Haifa.

British troops roped off the plant and fought their way through refining stills and tanks to halt the bloodshed… (The Haifa refinery is operated by Consolidated Refineries, Ltd., which is owned jointly by the Shell and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. The plant’s capacity is 4,000.000 (million) metric tons a year.

It handles oil from the Iraqi fields, which moves in by pipelines.)… A Jewish source said the bomb probably was hurled by members of Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Jewish underground organization which yesterday blasted and machine-gunned Arabs at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

The outbreak raised the Palestine death toll since the United Nations vote for partition November 29 to 478.

Throughout the Middle East, 599 have been killed… Arabs, irked by Jewish punitive raids for three successive days, took the initiative in earlier communal rioting in Palestine today as the bloody strife, which broke out after the United Nations decision to partition Palestine, entered its second month.”

How this transcription was made

Re-transcribed from the scan on 22 October 2026 after a labor-material pass found the stored text stopping short of what the page prints. The restored parenthesis names the refinery’s owners, which the stored text elided. The paper sets the capacity as 4,000.000 (million), comma then period, with its own gloss. The clipping is partial: the column breaks mid-sentence at a jump line. No masthead on the scan.

Context added by this archive

The refinery killings at Haifa, on the day, with the sequence in the paper’s own sentences: a bomb thrown into a line of a hundred Arabs waiting outside the employment office, then reprisal attacks on Jewish workers inside. Thirty-six Jews and eleven Arabs dead. The archive already holds the page that reports the Balad esh Sheikh raid four days later as revenge for this.

The subheadings are “Troops Rope Off Plant,” “Jew Shot in Galilee” and “Arabs Take Initiative.”

Cite this clipping

"47 Are Killed In Bitter Riot at Haifa Refinery," Evening Star, 30 December 1947, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1947-036. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1947-036