UNREST IN SPAIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 October 1944, Page 6

UNREST IN SPAIN

GERMAN ARMY ALLEGED.

LONDON, Oct. 25. "The Germans in Spain have formed a perfectly equipped army of 40,000 men which may go to help the German garrisons in south-west France,” says the French newspaper “Combat.” It adds: “Such a desperate attempt, opposed only by our disarmed men of the French Forces of the Interior, would fit in well with Hitler’s ideas of resistance.”

The Paris correspondent of the "'.Daily Express” says that the French censorship banned similar comments by “Combat” last. week. "Combat” to-day said that the censorship was purely military, and that it would ignore political censorship as illegal. The Paris correspondent of the Associated Press says that officers of the Spanish regular army are deserting to the guerrillas, and that the Republican forces are occupying a number of factories in apparent preparation for wresting control of the nation from General Franco.

A special correspondent ' of the newspaper “Liberation Soir,” from the frontier, says that the Republicans have wrecked a number of trains. A clandestine Committee of Liberation has been directing underground resistance from Aladrid for several years. A report from Barcelona says that. Spanish Republicans from the French Maquis now control three villages in the Pyrenees--Basots, Las Bordas, and Canjan—on the Spanish side of the frontier. Spanish regular troops have reoccupied the village of Salardu, and skirmishes are reported to have occurred in the village of Aran, it is reported that the guerrillas have lost 3000 killed and wounded since the fighting started on October 18.