CITY WIPED OUT

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 27 September 1926, Page 9

CITY WIPED OUT

MASSACRE AT SHEKICHEN.

LOOT, RAPINE AND MURDER WORST IN HONAN’S HISTORY. BY" CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. Received 11.30 a.m. to-day. PEKING, Sept. 26. Reports fro pi Honan describe the most terrible massacre in the history of the province. Thousands of defenceless people in the city of Shekichen were slaughtered by bandits in cold bJ.ood, the city was burned, and hundreds were carried into captivity for ransom. Meagre details brought by Chinese Christian runners state that the carnage was terrible, the bandits sparing nobody. They looted the city of portable valuables and went on with the awful orgy of slaughter, killing right and left.' It is not known whether foreign missionaries in the city escaped death, but it is certain the China. Inland Mission was totally destroyed. At the conclusion of the hellish work of voot, rapine and murder, the bandits set fire to the city which was reduced to ashes, mercifully covering the corpses of thousands of the victims of the greatest catastrophe in any city in Honan since the days of the Tartar massacres. The missionaries stationed in the vicinity were Misses Brook, McGuire, Joppins, the Rev. Mr. Conway and the Rev. Mr. Weller and their wives.