COMMUNISTS' RIOT.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19610, 4 May 1929, Page 15

COMMUNISTS' RIOT.

STREET FIGHTS RAGING IN BERLIN. (UKITED PS«£S A3SOCIATION--BY ELECTSIC TEL2GEAPH -COPTBIGHT.) BERLIN, May 2. Following a day of comparative quiet, Communists to-night smashed street lamps, threw up barricades and fired on the police reinforcements which were hurried to the spot. The police returned fire, wounding several Communists and then surrounding their headquarters. The Communists, who have not abandoned their hopes, are exploiting the situation and calling on the workers of Germany to join in a gigantic light as a protest against "the blood hath caused by the inhuman Berlin police" until all those arrested are released.

Strikes have alreadv broken out at the Hamburg shipyards and the Ruhr coal mines. Figures show that ten are dead and one hundred and sixty-six injured. Buildings in the neighbourhood of the fighting were heavily scarred by machine-gun and rifle bullets. Charges of murder have been levelled at some of the thousand persons who were arrested.—Australian Press Association.

ARMOURED CAR USED. THREE PEOPLE KILLED. (Received May 3rd, 7 p.m.) BERLIN, May 2. Communist crowds collected at various points all day long, with occasional revolver firing, but nothing serious happened until ten o'clock at night when an armoured car, bristling with machine-guns, and followed by three lorries filled with armed police, crashed through the Communist barricades in Hermannstrasse. In the south-eastern quarter, Communists who had previously extinguished the street lamps, fired upoti the police with revolvers from windows. The police replied with rifle-fire, eventually scattering the crowd with machine-gun tire. Threo were killed and twenty wounded at midnight, after which there was only occasional and isolated shooting. —''The Times"" Cables.