Systematic Sabotage

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1038, 31 July 1930, Page 11

Systematic Sabotage

REBELS SACK CHINESE CITY Missionaries Missing PROVINCIAL OFFICIALS BEHEADED COMMUNISTS wlio captured the Chinese city of Changsha and put the Nationalist troops to flight, have carried out a systematic sabotage, burning foreign buildings and callously beheading officials. Three missionaries who declined the protection of foreign gunboats are missing.

United P.A.—By Telegraph—Copyright Reed. 11 a.m. SHANGHAI, Wed'. A terrible story of death and destruction, which followed the capture of the city of Changsha by Communists, is told in dispatches. The rebel army, since Monday morn ing, has been looting, burning and killing and has generally reduced the place to ruin. All the Government buildings and practically all foreign mission property has been burned to the ground. Shops and business premises were destroyed. Provincial officials were brutally beheaded and thousands of the city’s population are fleeing for their lives. The city is still in flames. Last

evening the killed were estimated at thousands. The Communist commander directed a systematic pillage and a section of the army was detached in pursuit of ‘he defeated Nationalist troops. It is believed all foreigners are safe except three missionaries, who declined the protection of foreign gunboats. An earlier message said while the European sources of intelligence are astonishingly quiet on the subject of Changsha, Japanese reports indicate that 12 Government offices were destroyed in the fire started by the Communists, and also practically all the Christian church buildings. There is no news of the fate of the missionaries, who possibly are \in hiding, or perhaps have been carried off for ransom.