Editing King David Hotel bombing (section)

==Explosion and aftermath==
[[File:British Forces in the Middle East, 1945-1947 E31969.jpg|thumb|The explosion of a second bomb at the King David Hotel]]
[[Image:Curfew in Tel Aviv H ih 039.JPG|thumb|[[Mandatory Palestine|British]] paratroopers enforce [[curfew]] in [[Tel Aviv]] after King David Hotel bombing, July 1946. Photographer: Haim Fine, Russian Emmanuel collection, from collections of the [[National Library of Israel]].]]

The explosion occurred at 12:37. It caused the collapse of the western half of the southern wing of the hotel. Soon after the explosion, rescuers from the [[Royal Engineers]] arrived with heavy lifting equipment. Later that night, the sappers were formed into three groups, with each working an eight-hour shift. The rescue operation lasted for the next three days and 2,000 lorry loads of rubble were removed. From the wreckage and rubble the rescuers managed to extract six survivors. The last to be found alive was Assistant Secretary Downing C. Thompson, 31 hours after the explosion, but he died just over a week later.<ref>''Palestine Post'', 24 July 1946, p. 1; 2 August, p. 3.</ref>

Ninety-one people were killed, most of them being staff of the hotel or Secretariat: 21 were first-rank government officials, including under-secretary [[Robert Paus Platt]], the most senior official among the victims, and seven assistant secretaries; 49 were second-rank clerks, typists and messengers, junior members of the Secretariat, employees of the hotel and canteen workers; 13 were soldiers; three policemen; and five were bystanders. By nationality, there were 41 Arabs, 28 British citizens, 17 Jews, two Armenians, one Russian, one Greek and one Egyptian. Forty-nine people were injured.<ref name="tclarke81" /><ref name="bethell" /> Some of the deaths and injuries occurred in the road outside the hotel and in adjacent buildings. The blast threw Postmaster General Gerald Kennedy from the hotel across the street onto a wall of the YMCA building opposite, from which his body had to be scraped off.<ref name="cwalton2013">{{cite book |last = Walton |first = Calder |title = Empire of Secrets |publisher = [[Harper Press]] |year = 2013 |pages=78, 79 |isbn = 978-0-00-745796-0}}</ref> No identifiable traces were found of thirteen of those killed.<ref name="tclarke81" /> Among the dead were Yulius Jacobs, an Irgun sympathizer,<ref name="katz1966" /> and [[Edward Sperling]], a Zionist writer and government official. Immediately after the bombing the Mandate government began planning [[Operation Shark]].