IN IRELAND.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 24 March 1924, Page 5

IN IRELAND.

A DASTARDLY OUTRAGE. X MACHINE-GUNS TURNED ON BRITISH SOLDIERS. MJI PBKSB ASSOCIATION—COPIHIGttT DUBLIN, March 21. Four Free Staters turned machine guns on .British soldiers at' Queenstown. There were twelve casualties. I Eight officers arrested on Tuesday I were released on parole at Queenstown. | Free State patrols are scouring the district lor the perpetrators of the ' machine gun outrage. I President Cbsgrave telegraphed Mr Macdonald expressing the Government’s horror and detestation oi the cowardly-crime, and assuring him that no effort would be spared to bring the criminals to account. LONDON, March 23. The Queenstown outrage was renI dered all the more dastardly by the ‘ fact that the soldiers who were fired j upon Were accompanied by women I and children. The press is bitterly condemnatory of the outrage. One British soldier, wounded at Queenstown, succumbed. The War Office announced that one officer was seriously wounded and seven men dangerously, six seriously, .and three slightly wounded. Five civilians, of whom two are women, were wounded. Major-General Liam Tobin has written to the Dublin papers disclaiming responsibility for the cowardly act.

Hie Free State Government has offered a reward of £lO,OOO for the capture of the men concerned in the Queenstown outrage. Details show that a large high powered motor car, containing four men, dressed as Free State officers, drove to the pierhead at seven in the evening. Without warning they opened fire .with machine guns on a party of about .fifty people, mostly British soldiers just landed from Spike Island military launch, centering on the soldiers. The motor -car then raced out ot town, firing as it went at the destroy'd' Scythe, but failed it. DUBLIN, March 21.

Mr Kevin O’Higgins (Minister for Home Affairs) .announced that General McSweeney, Colonels Mac Neil and Cronan had been appointed Chief of Staff, Adjutant-General and Quartermaster General respectively.