After fierce fighting yesterday at Langfang, the railway centre midway between Peking and Tientsin, from which the Chinese were finally driven out, Japanese soldiers last night entered Peking. They had previously demanded entry into the city at the conclusion of fighting a short distance outside, and had been repulsed by Chinese guards when trying to occupy the suburban railway station just outside the west wall.
Twenty Japanese are reported to have been killed inside the Changimen, the western gate of Peking, when three lorries were blown up with hand-grenades. One Chinese policeman was killed and another wounded.
Ten lorries full of Japanese troops had passed through the gate when the fighting broke out. The Chinese allege that the Japanese opened fire, and that the Chinese guarding the gate then dropped the hand-grenades. The Japanese say the grenades dropped first.
The majority of the Japanese soldiers took refuge in a temple inside the city walls, where they are now surrounded by Chinese troops and by about 1,000 armed Chinese plain-clothes policemen. The entire section of the city near the Changimen gate has been cordoned off.
The fighting at Langfang continued for eight hours until noon yesterday. A bombardment by 17 Japanese aeroplanes finally forced the Chinese troops ╤ who, suffering heavy losses, had already resisted one aerial attack and heavy fire from field guns ╤ to flee, leaving the Japanese to occupy Langfang. This materially strengthens their grip on all the railway system of North China.
General Katsuki, the Japanese Commander-in-Chief in North China, last evening presented an ultimatum in the name of the Imperial Japanese Army demanding the withdrawal of the whole of the Chinese 37th Division ╤ the soldiers involved in the original Lukouchiao clash ╤- by noon tomorrow, under threat of ╥military measures.╙
