STRUGGLE FOR IRUN

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 56, 3 September 1936, Page 9

STRUGGLE FOR IRUN

FIGHTING RESUMED

REBELS GAIN GROUND

MEETING OF ENVOYS

HUMANISATION OF WARFARE

United Press Association— By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received September 3, 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, September 2. The fighting on the Irun front was resumed, machine-guns and artillery exchanging bombardments. The rebels gained a strategic point on Uncha Hill and captured Mount Turiarte, the main bastion of the Irun defence, opening a way to the main road to San Sebastian. Hurricane fire developed when General Mola ordered a general bombardment, to which the defenders, aided by an armoured train, desperately replied. The loyalists finally succeeded in repulsing the strongest rebel attack yet launched on the Irun front, inflicting heavy losses, but the rebels desperately counterattacked later in the afternoon, engaging in hand-to-hand conflict loyalists in machine-gun nests on the outskirts of the frontier village of Behobie. The foremost rebels are now .within a mile of Irun. RESPITE AFTER SIX DAYS. Sea mists rolling inland suspended j hostilities in the earlier attack, and the respite after a six-day battle resulting in 1600 being killed and wounded enabled the combatants to send casualties to hospital and bury their dead in rough graves near where they fell. Loyalists shot five .hostages at Fort Guadalupe as a reprisal for yesterday's bombardment. They declare that they will continue these measures.. The rebel junta at Burgos has decreed the inauguration of a foreign legion for the duration of hostilities and has opened recruiting depots at Burgos, Valladolid, Caceres, and Seville. A GOVERNMENT CLAIM. The Government claims a signal victory at ■ Soto, 20 miles south-east of Oviedo. A message states that contact has been established between envoys from Madrid and Burgos with a view to discussing humanisation of warfare. Senor Castro, who represents the loyalists, hopes to arrange with General Mola for a discontinuance of the execution of hostages and prisoners. Spanish rebel.aircraft dropped four .bombs near the destroyer Worcester and also near a German destroyer off Malaga. The Worcester steamed to Gibraltar undamaged. The Tangier correspondent of "The Times" says that General Franco flew from Seville to Tetuan and ordered the release of the Arab chief Torres, and as compensation reinstated him as director of Moslem sacred places in the Spanish zone. The decision has done something to appease the unrest.