Madrid, July 27.
Republican headquarters, admitting that their troops were giving ground before the Nationalist forces, issued a communique to-day announcing a "small retreat to the zone of the woods north of Brunete," adding that their fifth and eighteenth corps at the Villa Nueva de la Canada sector had repulsed the Nationalists and strengthened their positions. In the second air raid in 24 hours, Republican planes engaged in "dog-fights" with Nationalist attacks over -Madrid and brought down three of four.
The Republican garrison at Quijorna, made up largely of men of the famous International Brigade who were the saviours of Madrid when Gen, Franco's armies reached the capital's gates along the Toledo Road fought hand to hand on the outskirts of the town to-day às the Nationalists attacked from the north and south, More than 500.000 men, armed with every weapon from tanks and bombing plane to trench knives and clubs, were locked in a struggle to the death inside the Republican salient. which has been reduced to a 75-mile square of maddening fire and slaughter. At least 200 bombing™'planes, about equally divided between Nationalists and Republicans, dropped bombs and fought in the air. Gen, Franco's attack on Villa Nueva de la Canada and Quijorna, the southern tips of what remains of the Republican lieut, was the most furious Nationalist assault in more than a year of the fratricidal civil war.
Some observers estimated the combined casualties of the Republicans and the Nationalists for the past six days had totalled 00,000 men—United Press.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.