FRENCH REPRISALS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 158, 5 June 1940, Page 7

FRENCH REPRISALS

BOMBING OF PARIS. BERLIN ATTACKED? LE 'HAVRE RAIDED. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegrapti—Copyright.) Received June 5, 10.15 a.m. PARIS, June 4. _ The military spokesman said the French. Air Force liad already carried out a partial reprisal for tlie bombing of Paris and emphasised 'the necessity for secrecy surrounding the reprisals. The Ministry of Information spokesman is u 11a ble.. to confirm or deny that Berlin was bombed during the night. High-explosive bombs were dropped in the Le Havre region between 10.15 p.m. and 1.30 a.m. They hit a private house, entombing a number of people in the wreckage, from which they were extricated. A Berlin message says that eight are ieported to have been killed when an Allied ’plane bombed a Munich suburb at 2 a.m. The bomb substantially damaged a factory. The German High Command states: “During the- raid on Paris we shot down 104 enemy ’planes in combat and destroyed a further three hundred to four hundred in hangars or on the ground. Elsewhere yesterday our anti-aircraft guns shot down 21 ’planes. Only nine of our ’planes are missing.” AMBASSADOR’S ESCAPE. There was no air-raid warning in Paris this morning, and business is going on as usual. The reaction to the raid can be summed up in a demand for reprisals. The Berlin „ News Agency claims that the German air force attacked all types of aerodromes in and around Paris and destroyed numerous ’planes on the ground. An English broadcast from Berlin declares the Paris raid .. was confined to aerodromes. It denies that bombs were dropped on the city. The. American Ambassador to France (Mr W. C. Bullitt), who was at a luncheon when a bomb fell 10ft. away from him, cabled the State Department at Washington stating that he and a companion first went on to the balcony to see the German ’planes. A,minute later a bomb dropped on the roof of a reception room to which they had withdrawn, but did not explode.. Heavy bombs fell on all sides of the building. Every window in the room where they had been lunching was shattered. They went down to the airraid shelter in the basement amid flying glass and plaster. Two cars belonging to the guests were struck and burnt out in a courtyard of the entrance to the building. Mr Bullitt’s cables concluded: “My car was untouched; I am entirely uninjured.”