DESTRUCTION IN NAPLES

Waikato Times, Volume 132, Issue 22151, 24 September 1943, Page 5

DESTRUCTION IN NAPLES

PEOPLE’S UNHAPPY PLIGHT HOPE OF LIBERATION Unit pel IT'’-' A«n.—Elpc. Tol. Copyright) (Received Sept. 24, 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 23 Naples is rapidly becoming a city of the dead. Italians continue to fight the Germans and disease is spreading, state accounts from inside the stricken city. The Germans have blocked almost every shipping berth along the docks while t>ying to smash the Italian nests of resistance in the rabbitwarren streets behind the harbour front. Italian soldiers and other people are fighting back as best they can, hoping for the day when the Allies will break into the city to relieve them. No real attempts seem to have been made to extinguish the fires along the waterfront. Instead new explosions, as a result of German demolitions, constantly increase the blaze. Air photographs taken by Allied planes reveal that the Germans are destroying great harbour works. The city had oil refineries, ironworks, munition and aircraft factories all within a few miles of the centre. A great black cloud hangs like a funeral pall over the living and the dead. The smoke climbs into the blue Mediterranean sky, fouling it with the filth of burning oil and rubber and the contents of a score of warehouses and factories. Complete Chaos Reigns Fighting is going on in the ruins between German armoured units and Italian soldiers. Complete chaos reigns in the city. Cholera is spreading and over 120 people have already died from it. Hospitals are overcrowded with sick and wounded people. Thousands of citizens are fleeing daily into the mountains. Much of Naples was smashed by bombs before the Allied invasion of the mainland. Now the Germans are completing the job.