AGAIN VERY ACTIVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 102, 1 May 1937, Page 9

AGAIN VERY ACTIVE

GERMAN BOMBERS

ATTACKS ON VILLAGES

EXPECTED'

BILBAO, April 30.

A bombardment by the insurgents of Bilbao, Amorebieta, Galdacano, and other villages behind the. front is expected to be the prelude to intensive destruction similar to that at Guernica and Eibar.i The rebels are preparing to advance powerful - mechanised divisions of infantry.. ■■■■;

The Bilbao correspondent of "The Times" says that German, Junkers and Heinkel aeroplanes are again very active, intermittently bombing and circling leisurely over the population

to secure moral effect. These methods are associated with the consistent dissemination of false .news with a. view to correcting the evil effect on foreign opinion. Thus; although ' Durango is full of bomb-holes,, all the churches have holes in the roofs, every, housein the neighbourhood of the churches is shattered, the. dead number 200, including 14 nuns machine-gunned from the air as they .ran across a convent garden, and every wall is racked by machine-gun bullets, it is -blandly,asserted : that this was the work of a Marxist mob, which \ does not exist. Similarly, '< when. Eibar' was burnt, the blame was placed on : the Asturian miners, who were , never quartered there. When .Guernica was destroyed the .insurgents alleged that anarchist militia, presumably aided by priests, started the fire, the priests led the hopeless rescue work.

: It is clear that the damage was done by the "pajaros negros" (blackbirds), the current Spanish phrase for 'the Junkers bombers. ",'.'' : .

The insurgent battleship Espana, before.the bombing of Bilbao harbour, sent out a wireless message warning British merchantmen that they were sure to. be bombed- and machinegunned if they ventured into the harbour. This is considered to indicate that-the: Germans deliberately sought them as targets. ' ;: