heading to Nazareth when a reconnaissance report was received indicating that the Turks were leaving Haifa. The British made preparations to enter the city and came under fire in the Balad al-Sheikh district (today Nesher). After the British regrouped, an elite unit of Indian horsemen were sent to attack the Turkish positions on the flanks and overrun their artillery guns on Mount Carmel.
Under the British Mandate, Haifa became an industrial port city. The Hejaz railway and the Technion were built at this time. Haifa District was then home to approximately 20,000 inhabitants, 96 percent of them Arabs (82 percent Muslim and 14 percent Christian), and four percent Jews. Over the next few decades the number of Jews increased steadily, due to immigration, especially from Europe. The Arab immigration on the other hand swelled by influx of Arabs, coming mainly from surrounding villages as well as Syrian Hauran. The Arab immigration mainly came as a result of prices and salary drop. The Arab population of Haifa almost doubled between 1922 and 1931, increasing from 18,404 to 34,560.
By 1945 the population had shifted to 53 percent Arab (33 percent Muslim, 20 percent Christian) and 47 percent Jewish. In 1947, about 70,910 Arabs (41,000 Muslims, 29,910 Christians) and 74,230 Jews were living there. The Christian community were mostly Greek-Melkite Catholics.
The 1947 UN Partition Plan designated Haifa as part of the proposed Jewish state. On 30 December 1947, members of the Irgun, a Jewish underground militia, threw bombs into a crowd of Arabs outside the gates of the Consolidated Refineries in Haifa, killing six and injuring 42. In response Arab employees of the company killed 39 Jewish employees in what became known as the Haifa Oil Refinery massacre. The Jewish Haganah militia retaliated with a raid on the Arab village of Balad al-Shaykh, where many of the Arab refinery workers lived, in what became known as the Balad al-Shaykh massacre. Control of
