§ MR. CHARLES ALLEN (Gloucestershire, Stroud)On behalf of the hon. Member for West Donegal, I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any official information to the effect that 1190 a band of thirty-one komitajis, under their leader Apostol, was recently exterminated in the Salonica district, and that the Austrian officer who visited the scene has reported that all the corpses were mutilated.
§ EARL PERCYIt appears that an encounter at the village of Smol between the Turkish troops and a band of about forty komitajis resulted in nine casualties to the former, and the extermination of the band, with the exception of the leader Apostol and four others who escaped. A Russian gendarmerie officer was a witness of the engagement, and His Majesty's Consul reports, as a satisfactory feature, the fact that discipline was enforced among the troops and that no damage was inflicted upon either the village or its inhabitants.
§ MR. CHARLES ALLENWere the bodies mutilated?
§ EARL PERCYI am not aware.