SYSTEMATIC MASSACRE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17289, 3 October 1916, Page 7

SYSTEMATIC MASSACRE.

RUMANIANS TORTURED. GERMAN AND BULGAR HORRORS. TERRIBLE ATROCITIES REPORTED Australian and N.Z Cable Association. LONDON, October 1. The “Daily Chronicle's ” Bucharest correspondent states that it is more than probnblc that when all the horrors perpetrated by the Bulgarians and Germans at Turtakai are officially confirmed, they will rival anything yet recorded. 'Hie Balkan warfare wan a competition between the two Allies as to which could inflict the most torture. The Germans usually did things systematically, putting Rumanian prisoners in batches and shooting them m the market-plade and squares. A regular massacre of the Rumanian civil population was organised by the Bulgarian soldiery, aided by Bulgarian inhabitants. They went from street to street, killing, maiming and torturing. Some who escaped narrate that among the Bulgarian participators were welldressed women and young men in light suits. The women were inciting children to share in the revel. Knives and hatch ts were employed, and the women even used their teeth.

There is in a Bucharest hospital to-day a raving lunatic, a lady or good Rumanian family, the wife of a judge. Hearing that the Rumanians were being massacred, she rushed to the tribunal to save her husband, and arrived just in time to sec a hatchet descend on his head and cleave his body yearly in halves. Some Rumanian officers found and recognised her, and brought her to Bucharest.

During the previmis fighting Bulgarian women and children followed the lines, stabbing and torturing the wounded. Corpses were found with twenty and thirty cuts, and dozens of Rumanian soldiers are in hospital who have been tortured similarly after their battlefield wounds. More than one has been shot in the back. They narrate that many women were armed with rifles.

A strict inquiry' is proceeding, and an official report will bo addressed to Allies and neutrals.