Night of the Bridges

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The Night of the Bridges (formally Operation Markolet) was a Haganah venture on the night of 16 to 17 June 1946 in the British Mandate of Palestine, as part of the Jewish insurgency in Palestine (1944–7). Its aim was to destroy eleven bridges linking Mandatory Palestine to the neighboring countries Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Egypt, in order to suspend the transportation routes used by the British Army. Attacks on a further three bridges had been considered, but were not executed.

Only one operation failed: the Palmach, the elite fighting force of the Haganah, suffered 14 killed and 5 injured at the Nahal Akhziv bridges, after the group was spotted by Arabs working for the British, who opened fire on them and prematurely detonated the explosives. The other operations succeeded without injuries. One British Royal Engineer was killed while trying to defuse an undetonated bomb the following day.^[1]

To disguise and protect the real operations and to confuse the British forces, around 50 diversionary operations and ambushes were carried out throughout the country on the same night. The confusion also allowed the Palmach members to escape more easily after completion of the operations.