BOMB EXPLOSION AT A FAIR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 160, 23 November 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

BOMB EXPLOSION AT A FAIR.

FIFTY-TWO KILLED AND WOUNDED

Writing from Salonika under date September 11. Routers' correspondent says: A specially important fair was being held yesterday at Dairan, the Bairam fair, as it is called, because it takes place just before the feast of Bairam, and is intended to provide the means for the proper celebration of that feast. A great number qf country people, of whom the vast majority were Mussulmans, had come together to buy and sell.

About 10 o'clock in the morning, just at the spot where the crowd was most densely packed .a terrible explosion took place, a huge column of smoke and dust arose, the window-panes for a great distance round were smashed to atoms, and groan s of wounded and dying human beings were heard. Those who were unhurt rushed in wild panic from the spot, and in a minute the market was deserted, and all who could find shelter were barricading themselves behind closed doors.

But the authorities of Dairan did their duty. When the cloud of dust had cleared away, police and gendarmes were at once on the scene. They found heaps of dead and wounded, many of them burned, mutilated and dismembered beyond all possibility of recognition. Aided by some courageous citizens, they separated the dead from the living. Some thirty were found to be dead, and about sixty-five wounded, many of them severely.

Hardly any surgical help was available at Dairan. and everything needful was at once requisil ioneil by telegraph from Salonika. Of forty persons thought noi to be too lar gone to be removed, nineteen were sent by train to Salonika (of whom one died in the train and another in the carriage which conveyed him to the Municipal Hospital), and the remainder at Serres.

When the wounded arrived in hospital at Salonika, and after first aid had been given to some of them, it was at. once evident that two were dying (one died in the evening), and that eight amputations were necessary. Thus of (lie nineteen wounded transport ed from Dai rail to Salonika, three are already dead, one is dying, and eight others wiil have to suffer the amputation of one or more limlis, A preliminary investigation has shown that the infernal machine had been coir eealed in a sack of Hour. Four Unitarians have bi'eii arrested, and olli'i' arrests are expect ed. The odicial i"port of (he Kaimakan of Dairan says that ihirteen p.-r-on-. were killi'il "ii ill- -p.o. I went vl in-. " i'-i (all i. injured | int.-it whom ire alr-adv d.-ad '. s'\ i e 'ii -' ■ ■ -r. ! i■. and a ... rea a inn woitndi ■! I.