HUNS PRESSED BACK ON VORONEZH FRONT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 169, 20 July 1942, Page 4

HUNS PRESSED BACK ON VORONEZH FRONT

ADVANCE IN SOUTH Atrocities On Women In Crimea t'nilPfl Press Association.—Copyright. Rec. I.:i0 p.m. LONDON, July 19. The initiative at Voronezh is now entirely in Russian hands, says the Moscow newspaper Izvestia. The Germans are trying to rush reinforcements across the Don, but Russian artillery yesterday wiped out a whole infantry regiment attempting to cross south of Voronezh. The newspaper Pravda says the Germans In the Voronezh area and south of Voronezh are being slowly but continually pressed back westward. The Germans are laying minefields and throwing up barbed wire entanglements, cutting the roads, turning every stone house into a strongpoint and burying tanks in the ground. The Russians have (lung them out of three inhabited localities in one sector on the eastern bank of the Don. Red Star, the Soviet military journal, says the centre of gravity of the German offensive is now in the north Caucasian region, where lighting is going on over a wide area. The Germans are still piling in reinforcements, looking for weak spots and trying to break through and attack from the rear. Obdurate resistance in the face of great numerical superiority is defeating break through attempts. The Germans here possess so large a force that only the strongest defence with powerful counter-blows can hope to arrest their advance. Millions of Russian Reserves An Ankara message says well-in-formed Turks declare that the Russians have several millions of wedequipped reserves within the Voronezh, Astrakhan and Kuibyshev triangle. A Russian communique announces the withdrawal of the Red Army forces from Voroshilovgrad, the important industrial centre on the Don, which Is about 100 miles north of Rostov. The Russians are fighting determinedly as they withdraw and are inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. The German communique states that the Russians attempted a landing from the sea east of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, but were beaten back. The Berlin radio reveals that the Russians had gained a foothold but Rumanian cavalry discovered and repulsed them, and adds that the Russian boats escaped under cover of darkness. The Russian objective was the destruction of a coastal artillery post.

The Moscow radio reports that a gigantic air battle, in which 400 German and Russian planes were engaged, was fought over the Barents Sea, in the Arctic, when strong German naval and air forces attacked a convoy en route to Russia. Russian warships and submarines went to the aid of the convoy. Thirty German planes were shot down. Stubborn Rearguard Action The Russian armies In the south are fighting stubbornly as they fall back before the German offensive. At Millerovo the German spearhead has broadened Into a wide front. Many tanks and planes are being used by the Germans in the attack, and one tank division after another is being thrown in in an attempt to break through the Russian line 3. Towns and villages are in flames, chiefly through bombing by the Luftwaffe. A correspondent speaks of the encircling movement of the Germans in their assault on the industrial region of the Donetz. Fighting is going on on the Russians' flanks, he says, and our Allies are in the gravest danger. There is no confirmation of the claim of the Germans to have advanced towards Rostov from Taganrog or to have reachcd the Don itself. There is little news of the thrust south-east of Millerovo, stretching out across the plains to Stalingract. There has been nothing to show what the progress of the parallel move along the edge of the Don loop ha 3 been. The upper reaches of the Don are still being held by the Russians. At four points the Russians are reported to be making slow but steady headway with counter-attacks. An Englishman, Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Martin, who rose to his present rank from a corporal within a year, Is now in charge of an important base "somewhere in Russia." Colonel Martin won the D.C.M. at Dunkirk. Because of his knowledge of the Russian language he was attached to the mission to Russia, after which he was rapidly promoted. The Moscow radio, detailing a new series of German atrocities, stated that 12 women arrested in the Crimea were hung by the hair and fires were lighted under their feet. Hundreds of bodies of murdered civilians were lying in the streets of Simferopol, capital of the Crimea, where the invaders destroyed monuments and architectural features.