Arabs Kill 10 Jews in Ambush of Truck Convoy, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 12, 1947.

41 Die in Palestine – Highest Death Toll Since Partition

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JERUSALEM, Dec. 11 (AP)-Arab gunmen ambushed a five-truck convoy on the Jerusalem-Hebron road tonight and killed 10 Jewish settlers and wounded three others before Jewish policemen drove them off in a running gun battle.

Forty-one persons were killed in fighting throughout Palestine today – the highest single day’s toll since the United Nations’ decision to partition the Holy Land touched off the battling November 29.

In 12 days of strife, 172 persons have been killed in Palestine and 287 in the entire Middle East, an Associated Press count said.

Jews and Arabs shot it out today old walled city within sight of the Holy Sepulcher and battled each other in bloody engagements in Haifa, where the day’s death toll was eight.

Haifa sources said fighting broke out again there tonight with a counter attack by the Jewish defense militia Haganah against the port city’s Arab quarter, Wadi Rushmiya.

Accounts from the capitals of neighboring Arab nations said the welding of a ring of steel around Palestine has begun in earnest. Arab desert fighters were reported moving up to Palestine’s borders and also assuming positions for the attempted encirclement of Jewish communities in the Holy Land.

Throughout the Arab world other Malay prevailed. But it was a normalcy that caused outnumbered Jews in Arab cities like Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo to bar their doors and hastily affirm their loyalty to their Arab state passports and their hatred of partition.

An official press release said members of the Jewish community in Palestine would be granted fire-arms and licenses and “charged with the duty of preventing breaches of the peace” in the Tel Aviv-Petahh Tikva area.

The press release supplemented a communique which announced the government’s intention to withdraw British and Arab security forces from the predominantly Jewish area. That withdrawal already has began

The Jews to be armed, the statement explained, would not be granted “any of the powers or status of police” and the arms would be used “for purposes of self defense, Arrangements for special constables in Jaffa, it said, are being made “preparatory to the creation of a local police force under control of the municipality.”

Reports from Raanana, Kfar Saba, and other communities in Sharon, north of Tel Aviv, said Jewish settlers and Arab villagers met during the day to discuss the prospect of organizing a force of joint Arab-Jewish guards to oppose “gang attacks.”