JAPANESE AERIAL BOMBING AREA EXTENDED

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 2, 25 September 1937, Page 5

JAPANESE AERIAL BOMBING AREA EXTENDED

(Received 25, 1.30 p.ni.) LONDON, Sept. 24. Hankow was the chief sufferer in to-day 's Japanese attacks, .vhen six raiders, escorted by fighting planes, dropped nine bombs, but failcd to hit any military objectives, including the arsenal, which is four miles from "Wuchingmiao, where the bombs landed. ^ Wuchingmiao is a slum quarter and was crowded with 10,000 Chinese non-combatants, of whom at least 200 were killed and 500 injured. The streets in this locality are six feet wide, fringed with tqud hovels, which collapsed like a house of cards, burying the occupants. There were harrowing scenes in the darkness due to the destruction of the electric light planfc, An eye witness states that in ten minutes he saw 120 mangled bodies, covered with gaping wOunds, carried by. Some stretchers bore four or five naked children, the dead alongside the dying. Children who were indoors at the time of the raid, providcd the majority of the vietims. Incendiary bombs started fires which are burning fiercely, preventing the rcseue of many of the living. A bomb fell within two hundred yards of the British Gunboat Aphis. There wej*e othep holocausts at Nanyang, where a boinb struck a refugee camp, killing 60 people, at Wunchang, and at eight other cities in the south, At Shantung 85 planes participated in the raids. The significance of the Harikow raid is that the city is nearly 500 miles from Japan 's coastal air bases, necessitating bombcrs .lourheying over 900 miles. Similarly the raid on Nanchang involved a flight of 700 miles. This indicates that any of China 's great centres of commei'ce and population is at the mercy of the Japanese. According to military headquarters, the Chinese won their first big victory to the north of Shansi, where, after severe hand-to-hand fighting, the Communist 8th Route Army killed 5000 Japanese and captured 2000, and also quantitics of machine guns and artillery. In the neighbourhood of Ping-yung-kua, where the Japanese are attempting to cut the Chinese communications between Russian MongoJia and Shanghai, Chinese. armed with modern weapons, inflicted a thonsarid casnalties on Japanese attackers. In the LotienLiuhang Hector. 18 Japanese ''human bombs" blew up a massivc wall which had been holding up their advance. Engineers tunnelled 40 yards to within seven yards of the wall, through which they waded yaist deep in water, and placed eharges and returned to safety. ^ Infantry charged through th£ eiisxing gap and captured the CliineBe barracks,.