LOOTING IN FOGGIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 233, 2 October 1943, Page 5

LOOTING IN FOGGIA

FANTASTIC STORY TOLD

(Special Correnpondent—N.Z.F.A.) Recd. 7 p.m. London, Sept. 30. The correspondent of the Daily Express, Alan Moorhead, tells a fantastic story of looting in Foggia. He says that more than 200,000 people vanished after the Allied bombing. When the Germans retired they looted.

“They snatched mostly clothing. After the Germans came the usual hangers-on, und what the Germans left these finished off. I thought in the last three years I had seen the extremities of looting, but here touched a peak of wild, senseless abandon. • , , ... “At the local ‘Woolworths’ tne people simply clawed down the steel shuttgrs with axes and picks. They ran past the counters snatching up goods without apparently knowing or caring what they got. When packages fell on the floor they were trampled underfoot. It was the same in shop after shop. In the wealthiest jewellers the looters went straight through plateglass windows and snatched up rings and necklaces by the handful. They dragged from the cellars dozens of big wooden cases just arrived from Switzerland, and as they raked through the straw to get at watches and trinkets the debris mounted to the roof of the shop." The Telegraph's Zurich correspondent reports widespread sabotage in north Italy, where there have been mass arrests and summary executions.