EN. Francisco Franco's Nationalist troops smashed through the north and south wings of the "ring of steel" surrounding Barcelona today and later cracked the centre of the Republican lines by occupying the key city of Igualada, thirty miles east of Barcelona, after severe hand-to hand fighting causing heavy casualties on both sides.
Republican forces were being pushed back along a seventy-mile front as the Nationalists climaxed today's crushing offensive by occupying Igualada.
Nationalist officers admitted the Republicans were putting up "brave resistance," but reports indicated that the raw conscripts sent to the front this week from Barcelona offices and factories without experience under fire were no match for Gen. Franco's seasoned Moroccan, Italian and Navarrese columns The Nationalists were driving eastward along the Lerida-Barcelona highway tonight, apparently in a thrust which would carry them to the final line of steel and concrete fortifications surrounding Barcelona's suburbs. Military observers believed the only hope Barcelona had of heinz saved was another stand such as the Republicans have made at Madrid. The heavy concentrations Cen. Franco has thrown into the Catalan offensive led most experts to believe that Barcelona could not be another
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