KWEILIN SACKED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 212, 7 August 1945, Page 5

KWEILIN SACKED

LIDICE IN CHINA

(11.10 a.m.) CHUNGKING, Aug. 6. An American correspondent has reported that the Japanese sacked the once beautiful city of Kweilin with a fury reminiscent of Lidice. Japanese squads and paid traitors systematically burned the entire city before fleeing on July 27. It is officially reported that 52,000 Chinese civilians are missing from the Kanhsien area, 240 miles north ol Hong Kong. Reports aver that the Japanese killed them _ during their seven months’ occupation. According to the China Central News, more than 1000 civilians were murdered in lcliang up to July 31. The Chinese died of poisonous injections which the Japanese pretended were inoculations against meningitis. The Japanese “floating pocket”, a force of 20,000, withdrawing from Kanhsien to Nanchang, made further gains and is now approaching Sinkau, 65 miles below Nanchang, says the Associated Press correspondent. West and south of Nanchang Japanese relief forces which struck westward from Nanchang and eastward from Hunan Province have apparently linked in a manoeuvre designed to protect the “floating pocket”.