ATTACK IN DUSK

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 74, 29 March 1938, Page 9

ATTACK IN DUSK

FIERCELY RESISTED

INSURGENT INVESTMENT MOVE

LONDON, March 28.

It is reported from Saragossa that the loyalists have retreated 20 miles in 48 hours along the Saragossa-Lerida Eoad. The rebels before entering Sarinena fought their way through a defence system a mile deep. They launched an attack at nightfall, bombs and hand-grenades overcoming a fierce resistance. Their line now stretches unbroken from the Ebro River to the Sierra de Guara, north of Huesca, thus encircling the former loyalist positions in the so-called granary of Catalonia.

The rebels captured the village of Mascal Correig, 22 miles from Lerida and four miles south of Fraga, which they are now investing in the hope of subjugating the crack Government troops defending it.

The invaders from aerial photographs learned the exact position of the loyalist trenches and blockhouses in the defence zone on the Cinca plateau and launched squadrons of bombers which wrecked them. They followed up with fighters which machine-gunned the survivors.

The Alcaniz correspondent of the " Daily Telegraph" says wrecked cars and lorries, dead mules and dogs, and abandoned clothes mark the line of flight of thousands of fugitives.

The pilots of three loyalist aeroplanes, on landing at Mas De las Matas, were dismayed to find it was in the hands of the rebels, who took'them prisoner. The Saragossa correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" says the loyalists were successful in the Talavera sector of the Estremadura front, where they claim to have advanced six miles.