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JERUSALEM, Jan. 3 (AP)-Fighting erupted in Jerusalem’s old walled city tonight and informants said Jews and Arabs in that sacred area were locked in “an all-out” struggle for control of the ancient streets.
Jews began the battle, Arab sources said, by throwing grenades in an attempt to regain control of the wailing wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine in Jerusalem. Arab riflemen have occupied the wall for the last two weeks.
Jews and Arabs lashed at each other on two fronts, as fighting also broke out on Jerusalem’s outskirts.
Eye-witnesses inside the old walled city said the battle had assumed “major proportions.” Casualties were described as heavy on both sides. Arabs using “Molotov cocktails” (gasoline-filled bottles) set some Jewish shops afire.
As the battle began, Jerusalem was covered by a dust pall brought by a 40-mile-an-hour gale.
Police said they had no details of the fighting in the old city, but added- “The entire walled area is isolated. No one can enter or leave the city because the Arabs control all the gates.”
An American priest in the Franciscan convent inside the Holy Sepulchre Church told the Associated Press by telephone- “We can hear the fight from here. It is the heaviest we have heard yet.”
Approximately 1500 Orthodox Jews have been living in a state of siege in the old city. Cut off by the surrounding Arab area, these Jews have been supplied daily by convoys which sometimes fail to reach them.
The first casualty report from eyewitnesses said one Jew and one Arab had been killed and four Jews injured. A police cadet officer and a constable were wounded.
In disorders-throughout Palestine, 11 Arabs and two Jews were know to have been killed today.
The unofficial count of deaths since the United Nations voted for partition Nov. 29 stood at 533.
Meanwhile, a reliable private informant said that during the last few days five Arab training centers for volunteer guerrilla fighters had been transferred from Syria to the Arab-inhabited hill region of central Palestine. The cholera outbreak in Syria was said to be one of the reasons for the transfer.
In Northern Palestine near the borders of Syria and Lebanon, three Arabs were killed in a battle last night in Safad and another Arab was shot to death in a Jewish attack on an Arab village near Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, officials said. Fighting began again today in Safad.
Hagana, the Jewish defense force, announced that four Arabs were shot to death in a midnight reprisal raid on an Arab stronghold in the bloody no-man’s land between the coastal cities of Tel Aviv and Jaffa.
The Jewish raid was made, Hagana said, after Arabs opened fire on a house in the area from a strongpoint across the street, wounding three Jews.
An elderly Jewish woman was found shot to death in the Arab bazaar area of Haifa. There were other casualties elsewhere in the Holy Land.
Lt. Gen. G. H. A. MacMillan, the British commander, ordered the nightly road curfew for all motor vehicles extended over a wide area of central Palestine “in view of continued attacks on trains in Arab areas and attacks in general by Arab parties after dark.”