SENSATIONAL EVENTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1942, Page 6

SENSATIONAL EVENTS

REPORTED IN OCCUPIED FRANCE

Two Members of Vichy Cabinet Assassinated

NAZIS MACHINE-GUN DEMONSTRATORS IN PARIS,

GERMAN OFFICERS KILLED BY BOMBS

(By Telegraph.—Press Association. —Copyright.) (Received This Day, 1.20 p.m.) LONDON, January 5. Two sensational happenings in France threaten to bring to a climax the growing tension between Vichy and Berlin, The Vichy radio officially announced that the Minister of the Interior, M. Paringault, has been assassinated. Yesterday in Paris, Germans machine-gunned demonstrators, killing 32 and wounding scores of others. The bodies of Mm. Pucheux and Paringault were found cn a railway track between Melun and Troyes. It is believed that they were murdered in a train and the bodies thrown out. The Vichy radio later stated that, while it was believed that the deaths were due to assassination, the results of an inquiry being held this evening must be awaited. Pucheux was one of the most ardent Vichy collaborators with Germany. His recent rise in the political world had been almost meteoric.

A German newspaper on November 11 credited Pucheux with holding a good position in French politics. He spent half his time in the occupied zone and had become virtually an extra-. Foreign Minister. He is reported to have boasted in December that Communist activity in France greatly lessened after he assumed office.

The “Evening Standard,’’ reporting the machine-gunning in Paris, says the first reliable news is leaking out in Paris that bitter resistance to the Germans has again broken out in France, Two hundred hostages are reported to have been shot already. It is also reported that five German officers were killed and fourteen seriously wounded by two time-bombs in a hall. Others were hurt in a stampede from the hall. A message from Stockholm states that bombs were thrown at the Hotel Montcalm and a German bookshop in Paris, causing considerable damage.