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Show TEROEL SEIZED BY LOYALISTS HENDAYE, French-Spanish Frontier. Fron-tier. Dec. 22 (UP) A few hundred desperate Spanish nationalists, determined de-termined to die rather than surrender, sur-render, held off thousands of loyalist loyal-ist shock troops from behind the thick walls of a few buildings in Feruel today, challenging to the end the greatest loyalist victory of the civil war. Tfie Eighteenth loyalist militia brigade smashed into the main defenses de-fenses of the city key point of the nationalist salient in northeast- ern Spain, at p. m. yesterday. There was a four-hour fight. The weather was so cold that tanks were frozen and men dropped exhausted. ex-hausted. The snow covered streets of the ancient city were stained with the blood of hundreds. At 10 p. m. the nationalist defense was broken and the loyalists announced the capture of the city. People bearing weirdly flaring torches joined the loyalist conquerors conquer-ors In street parades that lasted far through the night and the nationalists' national-ists' searchlights which had been used to spot loyalist airplane raiders raid-ers were used to light public buildings. build-ings. This morning. In the old quarter of the central part of Teruel, desultory desul-tory rifle and machine gun firing 1 told of the brave Jut stand of the , civil ruards. the national Dolice ' force, who took an oath some days afo to keep Teruel or die in It. The loyalist Barcelona radio announced an-nounced that the remnant of nationalist na-tionalist resistance centered In the cathedral and a small part of the old town and that the loyalist expected ex-pected to wipe out these defenders soon. Republican authorities asserted that they had captured more than 1000 prisoners and that the last stand defender numbered less than 600. They asserted that they had found enormous stores of war materials. ma-terials. The United Press correspondent at Barcelona waa tryinc to verify reports that among the prisoners was an Italian general. He said It had been reported that th Roman Catholic bishop of th city also was nada prisoner. Loyalist authorities said thsy bad won their biggest victory In the 17 months of th civil war and that they bad (mashed all th plans of Generalissimo Franco, the insurgent leader, for an offensive that was to have cut th communication between be-tween Barcelona and Valencia. LONDON, Dm. 23 (INS) Th la-borit la-borit London Daily Herald, In a Gibraltar dispatch, today reported that Premier Mussolini is sending Arab fore to Spain to aid th Insurgent In-surgent cause. |