In the Balkans

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 55, 2 October 1916, Page 5

In the Balkans

ENEMY ATROCITIES. ROUMANIANS FOULLY MAS SACRED. ■ , hVsi ?h COMPETITION IN MURDER. Press Association—Copyright, Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Received 9 a.m.) ' London,. October 1.

The Daily Chronicle's Bucharet correspondent states: It is more t'hnu probable that when all the horrors perpetrated by the Bulgarians and Germans at Turtakai aro official!/' Confirmed, they will rival anything yet recorded in Balkan warfare. There was a competition between the two Allies, as to which could inflict the most torture. The .Germans usually did things systematically, putting the Roumanians prisoners in batches and shooting them in tli9 market place and squares. A regular massacre of the Roumanian civil population was organised.' The Bulgarian soldiery aided the Bulgarians among the inhabitants in going rpuud the streets, killing, maiming, and torturing. Some who escaped narrate that among the Bulagrlan participants were well-dressed women and young men in light suits, the women inciting the children to share in the revel. Knives and hatchets were employed, and the women eve" 1 usd their teeth. There is in the Bucharest hospital to-day a raving lunatic, a lady of good Roumanian family, the wife of a judge, who, on hearing that the Roumanians were being massacred, rushed to the ti"bunal to save her husband. She arrived just in time to see a hatchet descend on his head and cleave his body nearly in halves. Some Roumanian officers recognised her and brought her to Bucharest. During the previous fighting Bulgarian women and children followed the line-,, stabbing and torturing the wounded. Corpses were found with 20 to 30 cuts, Dozens of Roumaniar soldiers narrate that many women were, trmed with rifles.

A strict inquiry is proceeding, and the official report will be addressed to the Allies and Neutrals.