SAVAGE FIGHTING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 March 1939, Page 5

SAVAGE FIGHTING

STILL RAGING IN MADRID

STREETS MACHINE-GUNNED BY COMMUNISTS.

DECLARATION BY COLONEL CASADO.

By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. MADRID, March 12. Despite the Republican claim that the Communists have surrendered, violent fighting continues in the city. Bitter feeling raged in the fashionable north-eastern quarter and he entrances to the underground railway were scenes of savage conflicts. The Communists are now machinegunning the streets where any mass movement of troops, is impossible. The Republicans attacked the office of the newspaper “A. 8.5. in the hope of dislodging the Communists who also captured the secret police headquarters, and repeatedly assailed the Princesa Hospital. Republican artillery bombarded the Communist headquarters which vainly called for tanks by telephone. The defenders yielded after hours of fighting. The Republicans then recaptured the Salamanca quarter and recovered a trench in the scarred north-eastern district.

Civilians are starving. Many were shot on the outskirts of the city while attempting to escape. Most of them are remaining in the cellars not daring to join the food queues. Colonel Casado, War Minister in the Defence Council, said in a broadcast: “Our patience is ended. We have no respect for those who are throwing life in Madrid into disorder, and repression is beginning, with necessary violence.”