BUTCHERED BY REBELS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 261, 17 August 1936, Page 5

BUTCHERED BY REBELS.

HORRORS WHEN BADAJOZ FELL.

FEROCITY OF NATIVE TROOPS

LfiSBON, August 15

Messages from the frontier state that the insurgents finally? occupied BadajozT at 6.45 p.m., after fierce street fighting. English and Portuguese newspaper correspondents who flew over Badajoz during the final grim resistance report most savage hand-to-hand fighting ae the loyalists, with the courage of desperation, contested every inch of the insurgents’ advance near the. interna tional bridge. Captured loyalists were butchered like sheep against the lurid background of the blazing city. Native troops who formed a considerable ipart of the rebel forces lived up to their reputation for ferocity. The sickened and horror-stricken correspondents landed on the Portuguese side of the frontier and unloaded medical sup plies and food for the relief of refugeesThe insurgent aeroplanes kept up a persistent bombardment of the town, little of which now remains. A Hendaye message says: Fighting at San Sebastian and Iran continues with increasing vehemence. Every house at Hendaye is shaken by the firing of big guns, and the crackle of ma-chine-guns is easily heard on the I renc side of the frontier. The rebels are making a supremo effort to gain a victory, but the Government forces are putting up an equally determined resistance, The efficiency of the rebel air bombing has improved miraculously'in the short time. , War hostages are added to the. horrors of the campaign, both sides seizing families of prominent people with the threat to kill them if this or that town is bombed. Three leaders of the rebellion in San Sebastian, all artillery officers, were court-martialled and shot after making their last confession to a Carmelite priest. The newspaper “Oseculo” (reports that 1500 were killed in the battle for Badajoz, mostly in the attackers’ bomb and bayonet charges. The defendeis dynamited buildings in order to hamper the insurgents, whom aeroplanes also machine-gunned. Mass executions of loyalists followed the rebels’ triump. Two Government ’planes later bombed the insurgents. The battle for Iran and San Sebastian died down at mid-day and resumed in the afternoon; but in the evening the Iran and San Sebastian road was still open, although the rebels claimed to have cut the Government troops’ communications. The rebels also declared that they had captured Bobadilla, in Andalusia.