INDIAN REINFORCEMENTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 144, 20 May 1941, Page 5

INDIAN REINFORCEMENTS.

ARRIVAL IN IRAQ

GARRISON STRENGTHENED. LONDON, May 19. Ihe arrival of fresh, reinforcements at Habbaniyeh by air, including some of the most warlike units of tiie indiau Army, has cheered the besieged garrison, says the Daily Telegraph’s Jerusalem correspondent. The former besiegers seem momentarily oil the deiensive, and the garrison was not even upset by an attack by a small group of German planes on May IG. However, with the threat of German reinforcements still impending, it cannot be said that the situation is yet entirely happy. One indication of Rashid Ali’s failure to rally the whole body of his countrymen behind him is that the Arab tribes in the Euphrates Valley have so far shown no signs of joining .the movement, though they have been among the fiercest participants in every previous anti-foreign trouble. In the meantime the attacks continue against the enemy planes from Syrian aerodromes, and not only have German planes been destroyed but also runways have been smashed. Most of the British colony in Syria have now crossed the border into Palestine. A Tree French officer who was in Syria recently stated, emphatically that nine-tenths of the military and civil populations desired an Allied victory, and the Germanophiles were limited, to only one small clique of higher officers. The French army in Syria is between 45,000 and 50,000, and is mostly composed of colonials. The equipment has detiorated since the Armistice through neglect, and much of it is now unserviceable. There are about 300 planes, of which only 30 per cent, are thought to be airworthy, while the petrol supplies are short. Iraq oil is flowing once more through the pipeline from Mosul to the Syrian port of Tripoli, but recently a mysterious explosion put out of action the refinery at Tripoli, which is the largest in Syria. Incidentally, the Iraqis, while permitting the flow of oil to Tripoli, cut off the supplies by the pipe-line to Haifa. ENEMY TRANSPORTS. While the British Fleet and Air Force operating from Alexandria, Crete and Cyprus can prevent the Italians and Germans from landing large forces in Syria, the Germans are accumulating a respectable fleet of transports in ports on tile Aegean Sea by bringing Axis, Bulgarian, and Rumanian ships through the Dardanelles from the Black Sea.

To-day’s Cairo communique, reporting on the campaign . in Iraq, says that tile situation at Basra and Habbaniyeh remains calm. It was learnt in London to-day that on May 13 British forces occupied a position 25 miles south of Basra without incident.

A Jerusalem message says the R.A.E. directly hit one of three tankladen trains leaving from ltyak Junction for Iraq. The Independent French Agency’s Cairo correspondent says the National Committee of Frenchmen in Egypt has drawn up a declaration in which it protests against the cession of Syrian aerodromes to Germany. The declaration says: “The committee emphatically denounces the hypocritical and underhand character of the concession, which l»v creating a new menace to the valiant Imperial troops in the Middle East may oblige onrally to take legitimate measures of defence. We know that in protesting against this last particularly odious abdication we are acting as the mouthpiece of all the French ill the homeland who arc obliged to keep silence.”