SEVERAL HOSPITALS BOMBED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 51, 10 December 1940, Page 5

SEVERAL HOSPITALS BOMBED.

VERY HIGH MORTALITY LIST.

POORER DISTRICTS BATTERED.

GERMANS CLAIM 40 FIRES. (United Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.55 p.m.) LONDON, December 9. Daylight found London wearing new scars, which were invisiblie from a distance because of a heavy cloak of smoke from the extinguished fires, but which, on close approach, revealed the desolation wrought by the terrific hammering last night. ,

Earlier reports gave general details of destruction to buildings, but after mid-day the sources were confined almost exclusively to the tragically high mortality list. The Germans, as previously, showed special accuracy in attacking hospitals, of which those damaged included the General Hospital and Special Women’s Hospital. Three night porters were trapped under the debris, and are believed to be dead, when a block of hospital buildings was cut in half by explosive bombs. There were two other deaths at the same hospital. A number of elderly patients died from shock when a heavy high-explosive fell in the grounds of another hospital, considerably damaging the buildings.

Two bombs scored a direct hit on the unoccupied parts of yet another hospital.

Rows of once smart suburban dwellings lay in unrecognisable heaps of ashes and rubble. Craters in the roads necessitated the diversion of traffic in some areas.

Four men sheltering in the archway of a school playground were killed and a member of the Air Raid. Precaution fatally injured. Bombs demolished shops and dwellings in the same area, killing a number of people. Rescuers were still searching 12 hours .afterwards for missing people. Thirty were sent to hospital. Many are feared to have been buried under a block of middle-class flats that was demolished by a bomb. Many casualties occurred in the poorer part of one district which was severely battered. Two big storage depots were burnt out. A shopping district in the Thames Estuary area suffered heavily. A woman and her two children, aged 13 and four respectively, and a woman lodger were killed, and the father of the children sent to hospital when a bomb destroyed a. house in a Home Counties town.

Seven were killed and others injured when a stick of high-explosives hit a row of cottages in an East Anglian village.

Four were killed and one injured in, south-east England when attempting to examine a time-bomb, which exploded. The Berlin News Agency says that within two .hours after the attack on London 40 extensive fires could be observed in the Government quarter and adjacent districts. The areas suffering most were north of the Thames, comprising Poplar and Bethnal Green.