VAST DUMPS OF ARMS FOUND IN COMB-OUT

Chronicle (Levin), 2 August 1946, Page 5

VAST DUMPS OF ARMS FOUND IN COMB-OUT

Press Assn.

By Telegraph

-Copyright

k) p Received Friday, 12.20 p.m. LONDQN, August 1. Suspects detained in the present comb-out for terrorists in Tel Aviv now total 664, states Reutef's Jerusalem correspondent, quoting an official announcement. They include a number believed to be identical with the men wanted for complicity in offences ranging from murder to sabotage, besides a number wanted for less important offences.

Major-General A. J. Cassels stated that thirty-four men and one woman, all "extremely important persons" in the Jewish terrorist mrganisations, Irgum Zvai Leumi and the Stern Gang, were captured during the comb-out. He added that the British Army's drive against the terrorists in Tel Aviv would probably end to-morrow, but the "shoot at sight" curfew would not be lifted until the interrogations had been completed. The police found a quantity of loaded arms, including submachine gun ammunition, at Giveh Shaul, the Jewish residential suburb west of Jerusalem. Twentythree rifles and a number of rifle grenades were found in a manhole alongside the Kalandia airstrip, north of Jerusalem near the Jewish settlement of Etarot. Troops of the Sixth Airborne Division fired one round last night, when Jewish demonstrators tried to rush the barrier during the lifting of the Tel Aviv curfew order to allow inhabitants to buy provisions. The demonstrators withdrew, but one was wou'nded in the leg.. HUGE ARMS CACHE The Associated Press' Tel Aviv correspondent reports that a British battalion, after establishing temporary headquarters in a boys' school in Tel Aviv, found they were in the midst of a vast dump of arms, believed tp belong* to the Jewish resistance movement, Haganah. Thousands of rounds of ammunition, mortar bombs, grenades and hundreds of rifles and pistols were found sealed in rooms under the main floors. Airborne Division sappers are still haeking down the walls, expecting to find new caches. An officer stated that the fortyrooin, two-storey building seemed to be designed with hiding places built-in. Pneumatic drills, a few minutes after starting work, opened up

1 three large secret rooms, and are on the track of a fourth. Among the interesting finds were a number of two and three-inch mortars, and a dummy for a field gun, which was probably used for oraining.