15 Arabs Die In Jaffa Blast

Several Leaders Killed In Explosion At Hotel In Jerusalem

By Robert Miller, United Press Staff Correspondent, Jerusalem

15 Arabs Die In Jaffa Blast — Terre Haute Tribune, 5 January 1948 — Terre Haute Tribune · 5 January 1948

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Transcribed from the clipping

“JERUSALEM, Jan. 5.—(UP)—Twenty persons were killed or missing today in the wreckage of an Arab Hotel bombed by the Jewish underground, raising to 38 the apparent death toll in two attacks made by the Jews in the past 24 hours.

Five persons were known dead and 15 were missing in the bombing of the Semiramis Hotel early today and official reports placed the toll of the Jaffa explosion yesterday at 18 dead and 98 injured. Count Manuel Allen de Salazar, 29, Spanish consul, was among those killed when Jewish bombers blew up the Semiramis Hotel in the Katamon quarter of Jerusalem early today.

Three bodies had been recovered from the tons of crumbled masonry. Sixteen were missing and authorities said they probably were dead. Seventeen were injured, one seriously. A spokesman for the Haganah Underground force said it blew up the hotel because it was an ‘important meeting place for Arab gangs where arms were distributed to villages surrounding Jerusalem.’

The blast wrecked the three-story stone hotel. Rescue work was hampered by torrential rains and high winds. Among the victims were six members of one family of Christian Arabs named Lorenzo.

Subhi Taher, news editor of the Arab newspaper Al Wahda, was missing and believed dead… A government official said many casualties were Arab refugees, including some children, who had been given shelter in the building. The bombing was attributed to the Stern gang.”

Context added by this archive

The same first week of January, a second hotel, in Jerusalem. The dead are named: a Spanish consul, six members of one family of Christian Arabs, and the news editor of an Arab newspaper. The Haganah gives its reason for the bombing in the paragraph after the names.

The phrase “Arab refugees… who had been given shelter in the building” appears here too, attributed to a government official.

Cite this clipping

"15 Arabs Die In Jaffa Blast," Terre Haute Tribune, 5 January 1948, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-088. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-088