TRAGICALLY HIGH MORTALITY MANY MISSING UNDER DEBRIS

Evening Star, Issue 23755, 10 December 1940, Page 5

TRAGICALLY HIGH MORTALITY

MANY MISSING UNDER DEBRIS

LONDON, December* 9. (Received December 10. at 12.35 p.xn.) Daylight found London wearing new scars, which were invisible from a distance because of the heavy cloak of smoke from extinguished fires, but which, on close approach, revealed the desolation wrought by last night’s terrific hammering. Earlier reports gave general details of the destruction to buildings, but after midday reports were confined almost exclusively to the tragically high mortality list. The Germans, as previously, showed special accuracy in attacking hospitals, of which those damaged included a general hospital and a special women’s hospital. Three night porters were trapped under the debris and believed to be dead when a block of hospital buildings was cut in half by explosive bombs. There were two other deaths in the same hospital. ' A number of elderly patients died of shock when a heavy high-explosive bomb fell in the grounds of another hospital, considerably damaging the buildings. Two bombs scored a direct hit on unoccupied parts of yet another hospital. Rows of once smart suburban dwellings lay in unrecognisable heaps of ashes and rubble. , Cratered roads necessitated the diversion of traffic in some areas. Four men sheltering in the archway of a school playground were killed, and a member of the A.R.P. was fatally injured. Bombs demolished shops and dwellings in the same area, killing a number of people. Rescuers were still searching 12 hours afterwards for the missing. Thirty were sent to hospital. Many are feared to be buried under a block of middle-class flats demolished by a bomb. Many casualties occurred in the poorer part of one district which was severely battered; and two big storage depots were burned out in a shopping district. The Thames Estuary suffered heavily. A mother and two children aged 13 and four respectively, and a woman lodger were killed, and the father sent to hospital when a bomb destroyed a house in a Home Counties town. Seven were killed and others injured when a stick of high explosives hit a row of cottages in an East Anglian village. Four were killed and one injured in South-east England in attempting to examine a time bomb, which exploded. The Berlin News Agency says that within two hours after the attack on London 40 extensive fires could be observed in the Government quarter and adjacent districts. The areas suffering most were northward of the Thames, comprising Poplar and Bethnal Green.