143 villagers reported dead. Mark Twain mentioned it in his 1869 travel book, "The Innocents Abroad": "We jogged along peacefully over the great caravan route from Damascus to Jerusalem and Egypt, past Lubia and other Syrian hamlets, perched, in the unvarying style, upon the summit of steep mounds and hills, and fenced round about with giant cactuses". In 1875, the French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village, called Loubieh, and estimated it had 700 inhabitants. He further noted that: "A house built of cut stones of medium size in the direction of east and west appears to occupy the site, and to be built out of old materials formerly used for a Christian Church" Later that century, the village was described as being built of stone, on top of a limestone hill. Its population, estimated to be between 400 and 700, cultivated olive and fig trees. A population list from about 1887 showed Lubieh to have about 2,730 inhabitants; all Muslims. An elementary school was established in 1895 and remained in use throughout the rule of the British Mandate of Palestine from 1923 to 1947. British Mandate era In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities the population was 1,712; 1,705 Muslims, four Christians and three Druze, increasing in the 1931 census to 1,850; 1,849 Muslims and one Christian, in a total of 405 houses. During this period, Lubya was the second largest village in the Tiberias District. According to the Palestine Government's village statistics, Lubya had a population of 2,350 in 1945 statistics, all Muslim. All the inhabitants were Muslim. The total land area was 39,629 dunams. Of this, a total of 1,655 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land, 32,310 for cereals, while a total of 210 dunams were built-up land. Occupation by Israel At the onset of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War Lubya was being defended by local militia volunteers. Village forces constantly skirmished with the Jewish militias which would soon become the Israeli Army; the first Israeli raid on the village occurred on January 20, 1948, coordinated with one on nearby Tur'an, leaving one Lubya resident dead. On February 24, local militiamen and Arab Liberation Army (ALA) members ambushed a Jewish convoy on the village's outskirts, causing several casualties, including one militiaman. The attack signaled that the Israelis were unable to keep the roads open and that foreign volunteers (the ALA) were taking