Arabs And Jews Fighting Fierce Battle

Chronicle (Levin), 8 December 1947, Page 5

Arabs And Jews Fighting Fierce Battle

(N.Z.P.A.-

-Reuter,

Copy right)

Received Monday, 10.20 a.m. LONDON, Dec. 7. The Jewish and Arab shootings resulted in the ■deaths of -six Jews today, bringing the deathroll to 51 Jews, 27 Arabs and two Armenians sinee the partition vote on November 29, says the Associated Press Jerusalem correspondent. Arab attacks on Je.wish buses.on the Jaffa-Tel Aviv border accounted for three of the deaths today. Oue of four people wounded when a bus en route from Tel Aviv to Negev was ambushed by Arabs has died. The driver of a car and a Jewish passenger were wounded .in Haifa. Reuter's correspondent reports that the Jewish Agency has ordered the registration of all Jews betweeen the ages of 17 and 25 for security and other essential services. The Arabs are actively drumming up volunteers for ''national service," and opened two recruiting centres in Jerusalem today. The Associated Press' Jerusalem correspondent says that gunfire directed at a Jewish bus in the Jerusalem- Jaffa Road killed a Jewess and wounded a Jew and four Arabs. The police discovered the stabbed body of a Jew near Jaffa's Hassan Bey mosque. The flerce battle which raged on the Tel Aviv- Jaffa border on Saturday night was flercer than an^thing since the pre-war disorders in Palestine, says the British United Press correspondent. The Jewish forces went over to open warfare and used bombs, mortars, Molotov cocktails, tommyguns and rifles. The battle opened when a bomb exploded in the Abukebir slum quarter of Jaffa mainly inhabited by Arabs. A series of explosions followed and rocked Jaffa and Tel Aviv. A bomb exploded in a three -story house which { collapsed, killing a Jew in the debris. Several hundred Haganah men in full war kit and with armour shortly after midnight • launched the second big attack within - twelve hours on the Tel Aviv-Jaffai border in the slum quarter of | Hatikvali. The attack, which began after Haganah scouts claimed that they had seen concentrations of semi-military Arab forces in Salameh village, lasted six hours. The Jews used mortars and machine-guns and hand grenades were thrown.