REBELS BOMB BARRACKS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 267, 24 August 1936, Page 5

REBELS BOMB BARRACKS.

AN AIR RAID AT MADRID. RIO TINTO AREA SURROUNDED. (United Press Association—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 11.10 a.m.) LONDON, August 23. The Government forces had the ace vantage in week-end fighting. The scene of the bitterest conflict was Cijon, where the Government gained control after a week’s operations, enabling the victors to dispatch reinforcements to aid the loyalist miners who are besieging Oviedo, 'where a rebel sortie was defeated with the death of the leader, Ortiz Zatrate. The final attack at Gijon was launched by miners who. using sticks of dynamite. stormed the barracks in which the insurgents were besieged, hurling themselves forward in defiance of a murderous fire from the walls. Though many were killed before (reaching throwing distance, the survivors were not dismayed. They lit their fuses and pitched the sticks of dynamite over the walls. The barracks were soon aflame, but the rebels fought on with desperate valour until the roof collapsed, the dynamite meantime inflicting fearful execution. Only 1-50 of the 500 defenders escaped alive, their officers committing suicide rather than fall into the enemy’s hands. The miners captured a number of guns. A squadron of rebel aeroplanes bombed the militia barracks in Madrid and returned to Seville, claiming to have inflicted material damage. General Franco announces minor successes near Saragossa and elsewhere. Insurgent columns surround the Rio Tinto mining district, where 10,000 hardy loyalist miners, who are well supplied with ammunition and small arms, have sown all the approaches with dynamite and placed barbed wire an ound the adjacent villages. A rebel bombing raid destroyed a petrol depot at Malaga, containing 1,000,000 gallons. Loyalist troops around Cordoba counter attacked and drove the rebels into the city with heavy loss to the Foreign Legionaries and Moors.