Pittsburgh Post-Gazette · Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania · 13 July 1948
CP-1948-109
Two Strongholds Fall to Israelis’ Jerusalem Drive
Lydda, With Airport, and Er Ramle Surrender; Thousands of Arabs Taken Captive in Dramatic Victory
By Kenneth Bilby, Special to the Post-Gazette and the New York Herald Tribune, Lydda, Palestine
Transcribed from the clipping
“LYDDA, Palestine, July 12—The army of Israel concluded its greatest offensive Monday with the conquest of Lydda and Er Ramle, the seizure of thousands of Arab prisoners and the subjection of nearly 200 square miles of Arab-held territory.
In this district capital, where sporadic sniping still continues, from 3,000 to 4,000 Arab men of fighting age are in captivity at the city’s central mosque. Three miles south, in front of Er Ramle’s central police station, another 1,500 are jammed into barbed-wire enclosures.
Abandoned at midnight Sunday by its Arab Legion garrison, Er Ramle ended resistance Monday morning when the municipal authorities formally surrendered the town to Palmach assault troops who had penetrated its outskirts. Large quantities of ammunition, in addition to heavy guns, airplane engines and armored vehicles fell into Jewish hands.
When the battle seemed nearly over, 100 mixed Arab troops, whom Jews said were commanded by British officers, barricaded themselves in Lydda’s fortress-like central police station. The city’s mayor, Mohammed Ali Khiarly, was killed when he walked to the station’s entrance and pleaded with the Arabs to surrender.”
Context added by this archive
The non-Associated Press account of Lydda and Ramle, filed from Lydda the day it happened. Where the AP wrote that refugees reached the Judean Hills, this one writes conquest, seizure, subjection and captivity, counts the men held in the mosque and behind the wire, and names the mayor of Lydda and how he died. It runs beside a murder in Hazelwood.
Cite this clipping
"Two Strongholds Fall to Israelis’ Jerusalem Drive," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 13 July 1948, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-109. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-109
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1948-109.
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