TOWN LOOTED

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 89, 20 August 1923, Page 5

TOWN LOOTED

CHINESE BANDITS' RAID. CHURCH BUILDINGS FIRiZD. Press Association—Copyright. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. Peking, August 18. Hankow messages repot that bandits attacked Tsaoshih ;md burned the London Mission Hospital and foreign quarter, also the Catholic Church buildings. They then looted the town.

Two Irish Catholic priests named McHugh and Ward were the only foreigners in the- town at the time of tho attack. Both are massing, but it is believed they escaped dressed as Chinese. A Chinese doctor and other Chinese attached to tho London mission were captured. Two-thirds of tho houses in tho town were burned.

The local garrison, numbering 120. lost eight killed, and the rest marched out. The bandits, who are still in the neighborhood, took two hundred captives.

PRIESTS' EXCITING ESCAPE. PART 5F TOWN BURNED. (Renter). (Received £.40 a.m.) Pekin, August 19. Two Catholic priests who escape] from Tsaoshih have reached Hankow. Father McHugh succeeded in crossing tho river, using a door as a raft. They report that the greater part of tho town has been burned, though tho Catholic Church and protestant hospital escaped.