page_title: Deir Yassin massacre
section_title: Villagers taken to Jerusalem, possibly killed
hierarchical_section_title: Deir Yassin massacre / The attack / The killing and the aftermath / Villagers taken to Jerusalem, possibly killed
caption_attribution_description: Jaffa Gate (Gate of the Friend, Chevron Gate, Bab al-Halil, The Gate of David's Prayer Shrine, Porta Davidi, Sha'ar Yaffo) in Jerusalem, Israel
context_page_description: The Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Far-right wing Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi killed at least 107 Palestinian Arabs in Deir Yassin, a village of roughly 600 people near Jerusalem. The assault occurred as Jewish militia sought to relieve the blockade of Jerusalem during the civil war that preceded the end of British rule in Palestine.
  According to Irgun sources, the village guards felt surprised by "the Jews" entering their village at night and opened fire on the Irgun force. The village fell after fierce house-to-house fighting. During and after the battle for the village, at least 107 Palestinians were killed, including women and children—some were shot, while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes. Despite an original boast by the victors that 254 had been killed, Aref al-Aref counted 117 victims, seven in combat and the rest in their homes. According to a count conducted by International Red Cross representative Jacques de Reynier, apart from bodies left lying in the streets, 150 corpses were found in one cistern alone, among them people who had been either decapitated or disemboweled.
context_section_description: Morris writes that the Irgun and Lehi troops loaded some survivors, including women and children, onto trucks, and drove them through the streets of West Jerusalem, where they were jeered, spat at, and stoned. Harry Levin, a Haganah broadcaster, reported seeing "three trucks driving slowly up and down King George V Avenue bearing men, women, and children, their hands above their heads, guarded by Jews armed with sten-guns and rifles." Contrary to Pa'il's account that people from Givat Shaul had helped the prisoners, Haganah intelligence officer Mordechai Gichon wrote on April 10 that they had taken part in the torture of prisoners, referring to their being kicked and shoved with rifle butts.
  Pi'al reported to Haganah intelligence on April 10 that he saw five Arab men being paraded through the streets, and later saw their bodies in a quarry near Givat Shaul. Morris writes that this is supported by a report from Dr. Z. Avigdori, the chairman of the Jerusalem branch of the Palestine Physicians Association, and his deputy, Dr. A. Druyan, who were sent by the Jewish Agency to examine the scene on April 12. They walked from house to house, counting and examining corpses. Their report said they found 46 corpses. The cause of death had been injuries from bullets or bombs, and that "all the bodies were dressed in their own clothes, limbs were whole and we saw no signs of mutilation." They also said they found five male bodies in a house by the village quarry.
  Mordechai Gichon reported on April 10 seeing people carry bodies to the quarry east of Deir Yassin: "We entered the village around 3:00 in the afternoon [of April 9] ... In the village there were tens of bodies. The dissidents got them out of the roads. I told them not to throw the bodies into cisterns and caves, because that was the first place that would be checked...." He described beatings, looting, and the stripping of jewelry and money from prisoners. He wrote that the initial orders were to take the men prisoner and send the women and children away, but the order was changed to kill all the prisoners. The mukhtar's son was killed in front of his mother and sisters, he said.
  The head of the HIS in Jerusalem, Yitzhak Levy, wrote in reports dated April 12 and 13: "The conquest of the village was carried out with great brutality, whole families [including] women, old people and children were killed and there are piles and piles of dead." He wrote that a mother and child who had been moved from Deir Yassin to Sheikh Badr were killed there by Lehi fighters. Seven old men and women, who had been taken to Jerusalem, were taken back to Deir Yassin and killed in the quarry there, he wrote, and an Arab man, believed to be a sniper, was killed and his corpse burned in front of foreign journalists.
  Fifty-five children from the village whose parents had been killed were taken to the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, and left there. They were found by a Palestinian woman, Hind Husseini, a member of the prominent Palestinian Husseini family. She at first rented two rooms for them, bringing them food every day, before moving them to the Sahyoun convent. In July, she moved them again, this time to her family home, a large house her grandfather had built in Jerusalem in 1891. She renamed the house Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi (Arab Children's House), and set up a foundation to finance it. The orphanage continues to this day.
caption: Fifty-five orphans from the village were left by the Jaffa Gate to fend for themselves.
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