Already in March 1946, several refugees, Dov Gurwitz(Roumenian), Aba Churman (Polish), assisted by several others – Natan Rzepkowicz (Polish), Tiburzio Deitel (Fiume), Chono Steingarten (Polish) and Girsh Guta (Polish), had established an office of Jewish correspondence in via Sicilia 135, near the Allied Intelligenced offices, and this was chosen to become the central office for Irgun operations in Italy. The British Embassy in Italy was considered by the Irgun to be a centre of operations hindering Jewish migration to Palestine, and thus was singled out as a target. Planning for the operation was completed by early October. Before the war Zeev Jabotinsky's Betar movement had obtained permission from Mussolini to have militants train at a Naval College established in Civitavecchia under the auspices of the Italian fascist authorities. According to the historian of fascism Giuseppe Parlato, the Irgun had purchased from the post-war neofascist terrorist group FAR the explosives used for the attempt via the offices of its co-founder Pino Romualdi a fascist who had set up a secret repository of army munitions and explosives after war's end. Furio Biagini states that the material was taken from deposits located in a center administered by UNRRA. On the night of 31 October 1946, Irgun operatives divided into two squads: one daubed a large swastika on the front wall of the British Consulate, and the other planted two explosives, amounting to 40 kilos of TNT encased in suitcases and rigged to a timer on the steps of the Embassy's front entrance in Via XX Settembre. A driver, working for the embassy, noticed the suitcases and entered the rear of the building to report them. A few moments later, at 02:43, the explosives detonated. The report of the explosion echoed throughout the entire city and was sufficiently powerful to shatter all the windows of the houses and apartments within a distance of one kilometer. The 350-children school of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart was "badly damaged." The Embassy's residential section was destroyed by the blast which created a gaping hole in the entranceway. Noel Charles–the British ambassador and main target of the attack–was away on leave though his quarters were heavily damaged. No British personnel were harmed but two Italians, one a soldier who happened to be passing by and the other the Embassy's concierge, suffered severe wounds that left them in a critical condition.