GREAT BATTLE OPENED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 April 1939, Page 8

GREAT BATTLE OPENED

THREE MILLION CHINESE PARTICIPATING Simultaneous Offensives at Several Points RECAPTURE OF LARGE AREAS CLAIMED By Telegraph—Press Association.- -Copyright. (Received This Day, 12.50 p.m.) LONDON, April 12. The “Daily Telegraph’s” Hong Kong correspondent says there is evidence that the greatest battle of the war has started on a 1,500-miles front from Mongolia to Kwantung Province. Three million Chinese are participating, of whom one million are guerillas. There have been simultaneous offensives at several points during the last forty-eight hours in which the Chinese have recaptured large areas in Shansi, Honan, Hupeh, Kiangsi and Kwantung provinces and retaken Kaifeng, the first provincial capital to be recaptured. They have surrounded Chungsu and are reported to have occupied Tsengshing, only ten miles from Canton and speai heads twenty-eight miles from Hankow, twenty-five miles from Shanghai and twenty-five miles from Nanchang. The Japanese riaval force at Namt'au was driven back to its ships. TOWNS CHANGE HANDS Fighting in Canton Region JAPANESE BOMBING RAIDS (Received This Day, 12.50 p.m.) LONDON, April 12. “The Times” Hong Kong correspondent says Chinese irregulars have reoccupied Namtau. The Japanese heavily bombed Pingwy and retook Sheklung and Sunwui, from which places they are thrusting westward. A Japanese military train was blown up near Satnshui and it is reported that there were two hundred casualties. DEATHS IN KAIFENG Members of Puppet Regime Killed (Received This Day, 12.50 p.m.) SHANGHAI, April 12. . ■ Chinese gunmen killed six new members of the puppet regime at Kaifeng during a committee meeting.