AERIAL TERROR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20034, 5 September 1939, Page 5

AERIAL TERROR

' CIVILIAN VICTIMS TRAGIC LOSS OF LIFE USE OF POISON GAS MACHINE-GUN FIRE BOMBING OF OPEN TOWNS (Reed. Sept. 5, 11 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 4. Polish sources in Paris reported seven air raids on Warsaw this morning. It was indicated that the Germans had unleased a great offensive on all fronts during the night, presumably in the hope of subduing Poland quickly and moving troops to the western front. Air raids oh Polish civilian population killed 15(50 men, women and children on Saturday alone, said the Polish Ambassador, M. Raczynski, in the course of a press interview at the London Embassy. He added that scarcely a township had escaped aerial attack by German aeroplanes. The first time the German planes used gas was at Wolbrom, a small town in western Poland.

A Warsaw message says that the . polish Foreign Office announces that warplanes are dropping hyperite gas on civilians and brutally bombing and machine-gunning crowds of fleedm* women and children. Official bulletins issued in Warsaw state that several towns were set on fire. A Warsaw radio message to-day warned the public that German nlanes were dropping poisonous chemicals at Wilno It is officially stated that 200 people were killed in the course of bombing at Bydgoszcx on Friday and Saturday. The Germans parachuted a number of troops behind the lines in order to cut telephone wires and blow up bridges. The Warsaw correspondent of The Times says that the air bombardments, though accompanied by the violation of open towns, seem confined to military objectives. The bombardment of a pleasure resort, Ot-« Wock, 1 18 miles from Warsaw, was ■ determined by the existence of military establishments, but resulted in the massacre of a number of consumptives