COMMUNISTS CLASH WITH BERLIN POLICE

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6900, 4 May 1929, Page 9

COMMUNISTS CLASH WITH BERLIN POLICE

Outbreak of Strikes DISORDEKS QUELLED United Press Association —By Electrii Telegraph —Copyright. Received Friday, 7 p.m. BERLIN, May 2. Following a day of comparative quiet, the Communists to-night smashed street lamps, threw up barricades, and fired at the police. Reinforcements were hurried to the spot, and the police returned the fire, wounding several. They then .surrounded the Communists’ headquarters. The Communists, who have not abandoned hopes of exploiting the situation, are calling on the workers of Germany to join in a gigantic fight as a protest against the “blood bath caused by the inhuman Berlin police,” until all the arrested men are released. Strikes have already broken out in the Hamburg shipyards and Ruhr coalmines. The figures show that ten are dead and .166 injured. The buildings in the neighbourhood of the fighting are heavily scarred with machine gun and rifle bullets. Charges of murder are beipg levelled against some of the thousand persons arrested. Times Cable. Received Friday, 7 p.m. BERLIN, May 3. Communist crowds collected at various points all day long with ocasional revolver firing, but nothing serious happened till ten at night when an armoured car bristling with machine guns followed by three lorries filled with armed police crashed through the Communist barricades on the Hermannstrasse -in the south-eastern quarter.

The Communists, who had previously extinguished the street lamps fired upon the police with revolvers from windows. The police replied with rifle Are, eventually scattering the crowd with machine gun fire. Three were killed and twenty wounded at midnight after which there was only occasional isolated shooting.