DECISIVE STAGE OF BATTLE— Fires Light Up Sky Over Shanghai City

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 May 1949, Page 5

DECISIVE STAGE OF BATTLE— Fires Light Up Sky Over Shanghai City

SHANGHAI, May 23 (Rec 11.10 a.m.). —-Rifle and machine-gun fire rocked the down-town area of Shanghai tonight as everything suggested the Communists had closed in on Pootung, opposite the Bund.

Fires are at present blazing almost on the rim of the eastern bank of the Whangpoo river. Eight large fires burned fiercely, barely half a mile from the river and the sky over the Bund was just one patch of crimson. According to the official Central News Agency, the battle on the peninsula has reached the decisive phase. Along the down-town district of Shanghai thousands massed on every available roof-top watched the grim battle as dense clouds of black smoke billowed skywards.

Fighter planes and bombers of the Nationalist air force threw their full weight into the battle of Pootung tonight, streaking from western airfields in low-level attacks on the advancing Reds. Thousands saw the planes skimming the Bund skyscrapers in savage assaults, but the Communists methodically maintained pressure. Late reports said that heavy fighting for Woosung had also resumed.

Communist Strategy

Military observers believe the Communist strategy for seizing Shanghai is still to gain control of Woosung to close the last Nationalist escape route and over-run the whole of Pootung for the subsequent invasion of Shanghai proper through a series of simultaneous crossings. The Nationalist forces have blown up the city’s Kiangnan dockyards on the eastern bank of the Whangpoo river opposite the French Bund, said evacuees arriving at Hong Kong today from Shanghai. In addition to destroying the docks and valuable workshop equipment, the Nationalists blew up all the unwanted rivercraft on the Pootung side of the river to deny them to the Communists. May Hold Out For A Time Evacuees said they knew nothing of the Nationalist-claimed victory in northern Pootung, but they said the popular opinion among Shanghai residents now was that the city might

be held by the Nationalists for some time.

The British and United States commanders of naval forces anchored in the Yangtse river off the Com-munist-encircled Shanghai area have arrived at Hong Kong and are expected to confer within the next 24 hours. The Communist radio announced tonight that Nanchang, the capital of Kiangsi Province, had been captured by the Communists. Nanchang, the fourth provincial capital occupied by the Communists south of the Yangtse, is populated by 300,000 and is the main communication centre of Kiangsi.