The New York Times · 5 January 1948

CP-1948-157

Palestine Blasts Rip Arab Offices

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Transcribed from the clipping

PALESTINE BLASTS RIP ARAB OFFICES; KILL AT LEAST 34 Moslem Committee’s Building in Jaffa Bombed, With 14 Dead and 98 Injured BIG TOLL IN JERUSALEM Arab Leaders’ Hotel Blown Up With at Least 32 Casualties —Jewish Agency to Act By SAM POPE BREWER Special to The New York Times. JERUSALEM, Jan.

4—Fourteen Arabs were killed and ninety-eight wounded today when a bomb planted by Jews next to the local Arab Higher Committee’s offices exploded and shook the whole Arab city of Jaffa.

Many casualties are believed to be still unreported and a number of bodies are thought to be still buried in the ruined buildings. [Early Monday the Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem, known as a headquarters of Arab leaders, was blown up; at least twenty Arabs were killed there and twelve others were injured, the Jerusalem police said, according to The Associated Press. [Reuters said the hotel was reported to have been the headquarters of Arab national youth organizations; also that houses in the neighborhood were damaged by the explosions.] A statement issued tonight purporting to come from the Stern Band said Sternists had carried out the Jaffa attack and that it was aimed at a military headquarters.

The recovery of bodies was reported to be still going on late tonight. Orange Truck Used The blast came at 12:40 P. M. A truck loaded with crates of oranges is reported to have been driven down the street leading to the port, where oranges are now being loaded for export. Two men dressed as Arabs were in it.

They swung into the alley between the local branch of Barclay’s Bank and the local Arab National Committee building, parked the truck, went across the street and were driven away in a car. Almost immediately a blast from a powerful bomb, evidently hidden under the orange crates, shook the city and smashed doors more than a mile away.

The building housing the Arab committee was demolished. Barclay’s Bank, the central police station and at least fifteen shops were badly damaged. Reports of casualties are still coming in and new ones are apparently occurring as the local people, shaken by the outrage, are shooting at anybody with a suspicious appearance.

The greatest mystery of the bombing is how the attackers passed undetected through the Arab road blocks covering all the approaches to Jaffa for the special purpose of intercepting possible terrorists. Among the casualties today was a British soldier shot and wounded by Arabs in the Jaffa area.

Sunday’s Casualties Listed Casualties for the day in the Palestine strife, officially reported up to midnight, were the fourteen Arabs killed in Jaffa, one Jew shot dead in Haifa from a passing car; four British soldiers wounded and two British police, ninety-eight Arabs and two Jews wounded.

The policemen were wounded while they were guiding an ambulance to a spot where two of the British soldiers were wounded while on patrol in the Old City of Jerusalem. Gunfire went on at intervals today in the Old City of Jerusalem and some sources reported a “battle” between Jews and Arabs.

Police and military sources were emphatic tonight in denials that there was any serious action there. The Wailing Wall, sacred to the Jews, has been under Arab control for some days, but it is difficult to determine to what extent this is an effort to hold that spot because it is sacred to the Jews and to what extent it is simply a part of the general situation in the area.

A spokesman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine threatened today that the Jews would take the Arabs’ Old City defenses by storm unless the authorities protected Jewish movement in and out. In the last six days only a single food convoy early Thursday has succeeded in getting through the Arab road blocks to provision the Jews inside the walls.

A Jewish source said tonight Continued on Page 2, Column 2 … that the heaviest attack yet organized by the Arabs had been beaten off by a Jewish Haganah defense force helped by British troops in the Jewish section of the Old City of Jerusalem in the early hours today. According to this account the attack began at 1:30 A.

M. and the attackers cut telephone cables, causing an alarm in the Jewish section. The Arabs attacked, he said, from three directions, climbing over roof tops, hurling grenades and keeping up heavy small arms fire. One group broke into the Jewish quarter near Bikur Holim Hospital and only the arrival of British troops policing the city stemmed the attack.

Another attack was made at the same time from Silwan, an Arab village just outside the Old City on the southeast and across a deep but narrow ravine. That thrust is reported to have been driven off by Haganah with grenades. JERUSALEM, Monday, Jan.

5 (AP)—The Semiramis Hotel in Jerusalem, believed to be a transit headquarters for Arab leaders, was wrecked early today by a heavy explosion. Police said the blast had killed at least twenty Arabs and wounded twelve others. Six more persons were believed buried alive in the debris.

Police said the blast was touched off by members of the Jewish underground, who yesterday were blamed for the Jaffa explosions that killed at least fourteen persons and injured ninety-eight. The Semiramis Hotel is a three-story stone structure where the Jews have stated that Arab leaders stayed on visits to Palestine.

Heavy gunfire was heard in the vicinity of the hotel after the double explosion, indicating that Arab guards may have engaged the attackers.

How this transcription was made

Read from the scan at 3.5x to 22x by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by OCR and not by a person. The date is confirmed from the page by the map's credit line, which prints 'The New York Times' and 'Jan. 5, 1948' in full; the folio above it is sheared to its bottom pixel row and its year is unreadable. This is a jump page: the text begins mid-sentence under 'Continued From Page 1', so the excerpt does not open at a dateline. The excerpt also carries, in the order the page sets it, the Associated Press block under the sub-head 'Semiramis Hotel Is Blasted', datelined 'JERUSALEM, Monday, Jan. 5 (AP)', which is the probable common parent of the six other papers the archive holds for this date. The page prints 'Arab Higher Committee' where this archive's 1937 New York Times clipping prints 'Arab High Committee'. The other part of this article was added on 2 November 2026 from a second clipping (m012_1.png).

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