TRAGIC FLIGHT OF BASQUES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 129, 17 June 1937, Page 5

TRAGIC FLIGHT OF BASQUES

Heavy Casualties Inflicted (Eoceived 17, 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, June 16. Amid an orgy of bloodshed, carnagv, destruction and the tragic flight- oi* Basque civdlians, General Franco 's enciroling movement against Bilbao progressed to-day after the capture of Galdacano, south-west of the city, which cost the Basques 2000 casualties. The insurgents found the streets iilled with debris of weeks, wrecked houses, corpses, dead mules, broken glass and sandbags. The defenders saeked the toAvn and dynamited an explosive factory before their departure. The insurgents claim that 10,000 pnsoners have now been taken since the j.ron belt was broken. Perhaps the most signilicaut news jr the numbcr fleeing from Bilbao. It is . estimated that over 20,000 people have reached Sautandor from Bilbao in tho past few days. The Daily Telegraph's correspondenl at Dorie says that a mixed bmgade of Ttaliaus and Spaniards occupied the oastern flauk of the Bilbao estuary aml effecjiively closed the harbour entrance. Las Arenas bridge over the estuary, a gigantic structure costing £500,000, was blown up by the retrbating Ashurian nnnors.