MADRID REVOLT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 59, 11 March 1939, Page 9

MADRID REVOLT

DESPERATE BATTLE

NATIONALISTS AWAIT RESULT

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

(Received March 11, 12.30 p.m.)

MADRID, March 10,

Far from General Miaja having subjugated the Communists in Madrid, a desperate battle is raging, some accounts even* indicating that General Miaja is cut off from the remainder of the' republican zone. The Communists refused to implement their leader's promise of surrender. General Franco's troops entrenched on the opposite side of the, city to CanalJejas and Barajas, where the republicans are bombing redoubts, are fortunately inactive, apparently awaiting the outcome of the internecine struggle which is playing into their hands.

The Communists' most spectacular loss was the seventeen-storey telephone exchange, which lus figured in many accounts of bombardments of Madrid and has been further damaged in the latest encounters.

The conflict in the Plaza de Manuel Becerra, which is supposed to have been settled in favour of General Miaja, engaged all the available weapons on both sides and transformed the street into a shambles owing to fierce hand-to-hand bayonet and hand-grenade encounters.

Meanwhile citizens remain in the cellars and are unable to join the food queues, while frenzied radio appeals and aeroplanes skimming over the roofs dropping pamphlets vainly urge the Communists to yield.

Minor conflicts continue in the villages of Hortaleza, Chamartin, and Camillas, north and north-east of the capital.

The result is slowly swaying favour of the republicans.

Defence Council troops drove out the Communists from positions in the eastern district of the city, taking 14,000 prisoners. "

Colonel Casado said in a broadcast:— "Our patience is ended. We have no respect for those who are throwing life in Madrid into disorder, and repression is beginning, with necessary violence."