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JERUSALEM, Jan. 24 (UP)—The Palestine Government today charged seventeen Arabs with the murder of forty-two Jews in the Haifa oil refinery riot last Dec. 30. Twenty others were charged with wounding Jews.
The riot broke out after members of Irgun Zvai Leumi rolled a barrel-bomb off a truck and into the Consolidated Refinery, killing six Arabs. Incensed Arab workers turned on Jewish employees. Then both Arab and Jewish workers struck, threatening Palestine with a shortage of oil products.
It was the first severe government action against Arabs since Jewish-Arab clashes flared up after the partition decision in November. Apparently it marks a new government policy—to quell violence in the coming crucial months preceding British withdrawal.
Only two days ago authorities hacked down Arab orange trees at the village of Yazur as a punitive measure for Arab attacks.
No dates or other details on the trial of the thirty-seven Arabs were disclosed. Fifty Jews were wounded in the same riot in which thirty-nine were killed.