JERUSALEM, April 9 (AP)-Jewish fighters today stormed and recaptured Kastel, the most fought-over village in Palestine, in a new drive for control of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, a Jewish Agency spokesman announced.
The victory restored to Haganah, the Jewish militia, positions lost yesterday during a determined Arab attack in which the Arabs’ Judean army commander was killed.
Haganah and the extremist groups, the Stern Gang and Irgun Zvai Leumi, participated in the Jewish counter-attack. While one Jewish force knifed into Kastel, the other scized Deir Yassin, four miles to the southeast.
Commanders of the Irgun-Stern forces which occupied Deir Yassin claimed their men killed 200 Arabs and said half the dead were women and children.
(United Press reported the Palestine government imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on all roads in the Holy Land as the first in a series of severe control measures verging on martial law.
(British High Commissioner General Sir Alan Cunningham announced the curfew will remain in effect “indefinitely.” British sources said this meant it will remain effective until May 15, the day Britain relinquishes her Palestine mandate. The move would indirectly enforce a truce which Cunningham urged both sides to observe.)
Today in the compounds of the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem’s old walled city, 30,000 persons attended Abdul Kader Husseini’s funeral. He was entombed as he fell in yesterday’s fight for Kastel-in uniform and with a revolver strapped to his waist. Arab shops and restaurants in the area were closed.