BOMBING OF TOWNS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 September 1938, Page 6

BOMBING OF TOWNS

REPORTS BV COMMISSION CIVILIAN AREAS ATTACKED BY REBELS ALICANTE AND BARCELONA RAIDS (British Official Wireless.) (Recd This Day, 12.12 p.m.) RUGBY. September 1. Reports by the British commission to investigate alleged cases of the deliberate bombing of open towns, or indiscriminate bombing in Spain, have been issued. The reports refer to investigations carried out, at the request <sf the Spanish Government, into recent aerial attacks on Alicante and Barcelona. In 41 cases out of 46 attacks investigated at Alicante, the commission cannot state other than that the raids were deliberate attempts to hit the port area or railway stations. In the course of its report, Ihe commission states that it inspected Alicante and its environs and is satisfied that there is no factory in the city engaged in the manufacture of war material, that no stocks of war material are held in the city, and that no troops are stationed in the city other than about sixty or a hundred soldiers for internal security purposes. It is stated also that there is no evidence to prove that importations and exportations through the port at the time of the commission’s visit were other than coal and food supplies.

Regarding the bombing of Barcelona on August 19, the commission states that the raid was either a deliberate attack on a civilian area of the city, or a very badly aimed attack on the port area, conducted by an unskilled squadron. The report makes it clear that the commission had no opportunity of examining Nationalist intelligence reports.