MANY KILLED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 65, Issue 42, 29 November 1944, Page 3

MANY KILLED.

OVER FIFTY VICTIMS. BLASTING OF WIDE AREA LONDON, Nov. 28. “More than 50 persons are now known to have been killed, and a village w r as wrecked, vdien a Royal Air Force bomb dump near Burton-on-Trent blew up, rocking the Midlands in the worst explosion of the war,” says the “Daily Mail.” The search continues for a large number of persons not accounted for. The casualties so far officially reported are 20 killed, including one serviceman; three injured; 22 missing, believed killed; and 29 missing, including four servicemen. Earlier unofficial estimates of the death-roll went as high as 250. _ A local police officer said; We have been working all night trying to compile lists of the dead, but the trouble is that scores of people have simply disappeared. We don’t know wheie they are.” The whole area surrounding the exploded dump is a desert. Hundreds of cattle are lying dead in the fields, and the ground is pitted with giantbomb craters for more than a squat e mile, where there is not even grass One gigantic crater is atjeast 250 yards across. A Royal Engineers officer said that the bomb dump contained bombs which must have been worth millions of pounds. Thre were enough for hundreds of major raids on Germany. This officer believes that the dump was touched off when one bomb exploded, creating a rush of air which acted as a detonator for all the bombs in the dump. Rescue squads were last night frailtically working to reach 60 men trapped 200 feet underground in an alabaster pit, a disused part of which was used as a bomb store. Among the killed are at least 20 miners, a number of Royal Air Force maintenance workers, and two farm* Gl'S. Every building was demolished at an adjoining cement works. Forty persons reported as missing were trapped here, but most of them are believed to be safe. The buildings above the dump were blown sky-high as hundreds of bombs of all sizes exploded. Houses, cottages, and farm buildings a few miles away collapsed like packs of cards. Villagers, half-stunned by the crash, saw huge boulders, trees, telegraph poles, cows, horses and sheep flung dozens of feet into the air. Church steeples wobbled and chimney-pots crashed down. Roads were littered with telegraph wires, farm gates, and bits of fences. . . . An eye-witness who has fought in some of the war’s fiercest battles said: “It was staggering. I have not seen anything like it on the battlefield. Imagination cannot grasp the amount of devastation wrought m this pictureesque corner of England. Village streets are completely gone. Most of the houses are rubble. Great clods of clay, some weighing more than half a ton, were thrown up by the force of the explosions.