BIG ASSAULT HELD

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 31, 31 October 1942, Page 7

BIG ASSAULT HELD

Stalingrad Reinforced At _ Tense Moment

LONDON, October 30. New Russian reinforcements have arrived in Stalingrad, where Soviet tanks have smashed a German panzer force in a big clash. The latest Soviet communique says that fierce fighting continued last night in the Stalingrad area. Attacks in one sector by a battalion of German infantry, supported by tanks, were repelled, and the Soviet troops are firmly holding their positions. In the factory area German tanks tried to advance. Soviet tank troops met them, and the Germans, in spite of their numerical superiority, had to withdraw. Sixteen of their tanks were destroyed. Marshal Timoshenko’s diversionary armies to the north-west and south of Stalingrad have made further progress, Moscow reports.

(By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received October 30, 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, October 20. Fresh German forces are being employed in the third concentrated attack since October 15 against the factory area in .Stalingrad. A terrific artillery and mortar barrage is churning up a narrow area, but, according to the Stockholm correspondent of “The Times, tlie position has not appreciably changed. The Germans no longer believe that infantry and light arms alone can take the Red October factory. Moscow radio reports that the Russians north-west of Stalingrad captured a large inhabited locality by storm, completely wiping out the defenders, who were the Rumanian 13th Division. The Germans flung two panzer divisions and four infantry divisions, totalling 50,000 men, into the new mass assault on northern Stalingrad. The sky was black with German planes

showering bombs on the narrow northern area held by the Russians. Moscow radio says that there were always 50 to GO enemy planes overhead, dropping hundreds of bombs in an effort to demoralize the defenders, but the Russians, standing Up to the Germans’ fierce onslaught, repelled all attacks. Unite of the Red Army are launching counter-attacks which frequently develop into hand-to-hand fighting. The Moscow correspondent of the Columbia radio system states tlrat the Germans made 10 separate assaults yesterday against the factory area in Stalingrad, (but by evening had advanced only 150 yards. The German news agency reports that the Russians, counterattacking south of Stalingrad, reached the outskirts of Kuporos- ' noye, a village near the Volga on the southern outskirts of Stalingrad. At Stalingrad there is warm autumn ■sunshine unlike the counditions on the Caucasus front.