PANIC STRICKEN REFUGEES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 231, 30 August 1937, Page 7

PANIC STRICKEN REFUGEES.

BOMBED BY JAPANESE. SHANGHAI, Aug. 29. In yesterday’s air raid on Nantao, the Japanese bombing ’planes concentrated on the south station, Kiangnan arsenal and local administrative buildings on the outer fringes of Nantao.

Tho inhabitants were thrown into panic and thousands stampeded toward the French Concession, where the locked gates were opened only for ambulances. The bombs started huge fires.

The raiders also attacked Pootung, Chapei and other areas.

Four bombs struck the south station, which was crowded with refugees awaiting trains. Their ranks had been swelled by panic-stricken fugitives from elsewhere. The bombs demolished the tracks and sheds, and littered an area of a quarter of a square mile with the mangled bodies of dead and dying. The victims were mostly women and children, who were blown along the railway lines. Severed legs, arms and heads were scattered over the yards.

The ambulance service did its utmost amid the confusion. Kickshaws rushed those injured to the hospital, which already was overcrowded with Chinese soldiers.

The Japanese warships are still shelling Nantao. British doctors attending the casualties have appealed to the British Medical Association to use all possible political pressure to prevent Japanese bombers from continuing the inhuman slaughter of women, children and babies.

The Japanese Naval Spokesman said that the south station was bombed owing to tlie presence of Chinese soldiers, and would again be bombed if these continued to assemble. . The Chinese Military Spokesman 'declared that there were no Chinese regulars in Nantao, but merely members of the Peace Preservation Corps.