Moslem Death Trek From East Punjab

Northern Advocate, 4 October 1947, Page 5

Moslem Death Trek From East Punjab

(New Zealand Press Assn—Reuters—Copyright)

(Received noon)

LONDON, October 3

HUNDREDS died daily of hunger and disease on a 100-mile march which 80,000 Moslem refugees made from East Punjab to Lahore, says the Daily Express New Delhi correspondent. Whole families, from grandparents to babies, lie dead where they slept on the ground on the night of October 1.

The correspondent, who toured part of the route, saw starved and naked children, some dying, sitting beside the bodies of dead parents. They had little hope of getting food or medical attention. The bodies of the dead were emaciated to Belson standards and lay among a welter of carts, tents and the brushwood shelters of the living. Dogs dig up the shallow graves. The correspondent saw 500 of these graves in five miles. A bulldozer was being used to dig

deeper mass graves, while volunteers roam the roads and fields and load dead on the lorries.

The correspondent says Moslem volunteer squads were burying victims of spears and swords in an attack before the convoy reached the border of Pakistan.

Refugee controllers, at a conference yesterday, said breached railways and broken roads as a result of the recent floods! meant that refugees would be crossing the border spasmodically for at least two months.