Haifa Oil Refinery massacre
The Haifa Oil Refinery massacre took place on 30 December 1947 in Mandatory Palestine, when 39 Jewish refinery workers were killed by their Arab coworkers in a mass lynching.
The massacre was a response to an Irgun terrorist attack, where grenades were thrown into a crowd of about 100 day-labourers waiting at a bus stop outside the main gate of the then British-owned Haifa Oil Refinery. Six Arabs were killed and 42 were wounded. Minutes after the Irgun attack, Arab refinery workers and others began attacking the Jewish refinery workers, resulting in 39 deaths and 49 injuries, before the British Army and Palestine Police units arrived to put an end to the violence. The Haganah later retaliated by attacking two nearby Arab villages in what became known as the Balad al-Shaykh massacre, where between 60 and 70 Arabs were killed.
Background
In 1947 1700 Arabs and 470 Jews worked at the Oil Refinery, not including the British management. Relations between Jews and Arabs at the refinery had been known to be good. However, tensions rose in the wake of the pending 1947 UN Partition Plan and escalating acts of violence led to the outbreak of a civil war in Mandatory Palestine.On 30 December 1947, Irgun militants hurled two bombs from a passing car into a crowd of Arab workers, 6 workers were killed and 42 wounded. Irgun, who planned and carried out the attack on the day-laborers, said it was in retaliation for recent attacks elsewhere on Jews in Palestine.