YENAN TAKEN

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25139, 21 March 1947, Page 7

YENAN TAKEN

CONQUEST “ RELATIVELY BLOODLESS”

(Rec. 7 p.m.) NEW YORK, March 19. The Chinese Government has announced that Nationalist troops have entered the Communist stronghold of Yenan. A Government spokesman announced that Nationalist forces killed 10,000 Communist defenders and captured 2000 others in the Yenan assault (presumably meaning the entire Yenan campaign). The spokesman asserted that Yenan had been defended by a Communist army of 100,000 men. The Associated Press says that reliable reports indicate that the Communists abandoned the city before the Nationalists reached the outskirts, and that the conquest was relatively bloodless. Yenan had been subjected to a week’s aerial bombardment. Its capture coincided with a major victory of the Government forces in Manchuria and growing strength in the Shantung Province. “Reports of what the Chinese Government forces found in Yenan are •lacking in Nanking, but it is certain that they occupied an almost empty town,” says the “New York Times” correspondent in Nanking. The correspondent adds that when he visited Yenan early this month it was already half deserted. All official establishments-had been moved away except what was needed for the bare essentials of the military and political headquarters. “The Communists evidently staged no concerted opposition to the Kuomintang drive, and in keeping with the* statements of Communist leaders two weeks -ago made no determined defence of the capital. ' The capture of Yenan will not prove of much military advantage to the Nationalists. Indeed, it may be a serious liability. Yenan is in the centre of a sparsely inhabited and relatively poor area, and the’ Communists have carefully denuded the countryside of food to intensify the Nationalists’ supply problems. “The capture is, however, a psvehological gain for the Government. Moreover, the Communists’ administrative difficulties will be increased and their contact with the outside world, so 'necessary for propaganda, will be hampered.”