FIGHTING GUERRILLAS

Chronicle (Levin), 3 December 1946, Page 5

FIGHTING GUERRILLAS

Press Assi

Britain To Assist Greece BCRDER CRISIS THREATENED

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v.-Copyrighi

Received Tuesday, 10.30 a.m. LONDON, Dee. 2. Britain plans to give Greece nearly 10,000 additional pieces of armament, mostly heavy automatic weapons, and has approved an increase in the Greek Army of about 5000, savs the Associated Press' Athens correspondent, quoting a high source. The army will be increased to nine battalions. The need for heavy automatic weapons oecame obvious during riic. fighting against the well-armed guerrillas in northern Greece. A well-planned campaign to cut off Western Macedonia from Greece and proclaim an autonomous Slav State is in full swing, says the Daily Telegraph's Athens correspondent. The sacalled bandits are gaining ground despite the operations ' of the Greek Army. A cordon is being drawn right across from the Albanian border to Mount Olympus and this line is marked by rebel strongholds, mined roads and villages from which the gendarmerie have been withdrawn because it is not strong enough. Road communications from the south are open but are frequently threatened. Massacres, raids and other incidents can be plotted on the map all the way from Albania to the borcter oi Thrace by Slav autonomists and their non-Slav Communist collaborators. The breakmg-on of Macedonia from Greece dominates the rebels' campaigns and the possible consequences for Greece are that the remainder of Northern Greece with its port Salonika | would be cut off from Athens. Bulgaria then would not refrain jfrom claiming Thrace and eastern Macedoni^