NAPLES A SKELETON

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 7, 4 October 1943, Page 6

NAPLES A SKELETON

R.A.F. Bombing & German Demolitions (Received October 4, 1.45 a.in.) 1 LONDON, October 3. The once beautiful city of Naples is now in a pitiful condition, with only- one street, the Via Roma, intact The three months of bombing by the R.A.F. completely demolished the dock area and. the Royal Palace overlooking the port is a gaunt skeleton. There is no lighting, no_gas, no. water and no food and at least tiOO.OOO inhabitants are on the verge of starvation.. 10 add to the devastation, the Germans before quitting the city mined or set fire to most of the public.buildings and the b* The te in'habitants are still welcoming the incoming Fifth Army hysterically. Soon after dayforeak the populace packed the streets, and continued cheering, shouting, weeping, and kissing as the interminable army convoys came m. Italian guerrillas and Americans fought side by side m a roof-top battle over crowded Naples streets, clearing up last pockets of enemy resistance, says the correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain with the Fifth Army. The bodies of 200 . men, women, and children, some of whom had been dead for a week, lay in a Naples hospital, while on the other side of a. doorway GOO wounded waited for attention. Iney told of a week of (bloody fighting, against Germans and Fascists m ru’bbish-filled streets. • Reuter says that' typhus and typhoid are rife. Naples is without food ana medical supplies, which the Germans looted and burnt. . Marshal Badoglio, m an interview with Allied newspaper correspondents, his first Press interview since the armistice, said that as soon as the Italian Government was re-established m_Kome, political participation with the. Government would be extended over a wide basis. He was convinced, he said, that the new co-operation between Italy and her traditional friends would produce the same results as in the last war;