During the 1948 war, on February 29 and again on March 31, the military coaches of the Cairo-Haifa train were mined by the Jewish underground group Lehi.
On February 29, the Lehi mined the train north of Rehovot, killing 28 British soldiers and wounding 35. No civilians were hurt. One or more bombs laid on the track were detonated from a nearby orange grove. Lehi took credit for the bombing of the British train as revenge for the Ben Yehuda Street Bombing in Jerusalem. The train was the normal daily passenger express to which four military coaches had been attached.[1]
On March 31, the train was mined again near Binyamina, a Jewish settlement in the neighborhood of Caesarea, killing 40 persons and wounding 60. The casualties were all civilians, mostly Arabs. Although there were some soldiers on the train, none were injured. The Palestine Post and the New York Times attributed the attack to Lehi.[2][3]