BILBAO BLOCKADE

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 409, 16 April 1937, Page 5

BILBAO BLOCKADE

NO MINES IN HARBOUR. DANGER OF STARVATION Non-intervention ControL Press Association— -Copyright. Received 10.5 a.m. London, April 16. The Consul at Bilbao to-day informed the Foreign Office that the harbour entrance was free of mines. The shore batteries were adequate to defend territorial waters. Non-intervention control will operate at midnight on April 19. An adequate staff has reached the land frontiers to ensure the effectiveness of the control. Several sources express the opinion thait ® battle in the Bay of Biscay is imminent because the reconditioned Loyalist fleet based at Cartagena is heading northward. The Basque Governme/nt denies that mines or a blockade exisit at Bilbao harbour, which 19 Spanish and seven British merchantment safely used betw'een April 1 and April 13. The Dean of Canterbury, interviewed on his arrival in Paris, said that there was no danger through mines at Bilbao, from which port he had departed last week in the French tor-pedo-boat Aisma. The only danger to British ships would be from the rebel fleet. “I cannot imagine from which source Mr. Baldwin obtained information about the mines,” the Dean of Canterbury added. Unless food reached the town, women and children would/certainly starve. He added that many churches in Madrid had been wholly or partlv destroyed. Almost all were closed, but the Government hoped to reopen them. The correspondent of the Times at St. Jean-de-Luz says grave exception i£' taken ;there to Sir John Simon’s statement-khat the insurgent fleet sank six ships. The only loss in those seas since the outbreak of hostilities was a small coastal ship sunk by the trawler Galerna on April 12, 25 miles from Bilbao. No merchantmen under naval protection would suffer such a fate.