ERZEROUM.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 150, 25 February 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

ERZEROUM.

The Petrograd paper Novo© Vremya (says "Shrapnel" in the Otago Daily Times) announces that the Turks have evacuated Erzerouni. The news is not official. That Hie Turks should abandon such an important town seems strange. Erzerouni is the chief inland 1 town in northern Armenia, and must have a population of over 60,000. It is the centre of a vilayet of the same name, and, being one of the main strategical points of the ltusso-Turk-■s 11 frontier, it is the headquarters of the Turkish -4th Army Corps. It is situated 0200 ft above sea level, on a plateau forming the southern edge of the wide valley, and is about 140 miles S.S.E. of Trebizonde, with which it is connected by a fairly good road, no that the native four-wheeled fourgons can accomplish the journey in nine days. If the news is confirmed later on, this will be the third time that the Russans have taken the place. It was taken by General Paskevitch in IS2O. and, after being besieged and assaulted several times, and after its inhabitants lia.d suffered greatly from hunger, disease. and death, it capitulated in IR7B. just at the close of the Russo-Turkish war.

The probability is that the town has been taken, as the Russian guns were beginning to bombard it, and the Russian troops were converging upon it from three points. Apart from the fact that the central body of the Russian forces were about to invest the town, the advance of the Russians from Melashgera and Van rendered necessary a retreat on the part of the Turks, unless they wished a large portion of their forces to be cut off and bombarded or starved in an ill-supplied town.