SOVIET THREAT TO VITAL RAILWAYS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 7, 4 October 1943, Page 5

SOVIET THREAT TO VITAL RAILWAYS

Race Against Weather

In White Russia

(By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright.) ■> (Received October 3, I 1.45 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 3. The Red Army is making herculean efforts to maintain the full force of its offensive and smash the Germans White Russian line before the weather slows down operations, says Reuter s Moscow correspondent. The Russians in their drive toward Vitebsk haves taken Bersino, a small place of considerable tactical They are advancing from Bersino and outflanking Lesno, on the Smolensk-Vitebsk railway, 10 miles further north and only 25, miles from Vitebsk. ~ , j Observers in Stockholm say that the German High Command is pouring tanks and infantry reinforcements into the line guarding the vital Vitebsk-Mogilev-Gomel railway in a desperate attempt td stop the Russians sweeping over White Russia.

If Vitebsk falls, the way to Riga will be open an'd the whole German Leningrad front may have to fall back. A Moscow communique says that the Russians on the Taman Peninsula have captured the strongly fortified strongpoints of -Staraya Titaroskaya, 10 miles south of Temryuk, and also Krasnaya, Strela and Vozrozhdenie, and on the Gomel sector advance'd six to nine miles and occupied more than 50 inhabited places, including Strumen, 50 miles north of Gomel. The Red Army on the Mogilev sector advanced six to nine miles and occupied more than 270 inhabitefl places, including the district centre of Driben. -Leading units of- General Popov’s mechanized forces pierced the centre of the German Whit Russian line and reached the east bank of the Ipronya River, 25 miles east of Mogilev. The Red Army also made a further crossing of the Goj River below Chernikov.

To Cut Off Crimea.

(Axis quarters state-.that more than 250,000 Russians are making a bold effort to cut off the Crimea by a drive on a wide front in tfle Melitopol and Zaporozhe areas. One Berlin report states that the Russian drive in hilly country between the two towns is the heaviest of the summer campaign.

Vichy radio says that the intervention of heavy German tanks has so far frustrated the attempt to cut off the Crimea.

The Stockholm “Tidningen’s” Berlin correspondent, quoting a German frontline reporter, indirectly admits that the retreating German armies are carrying out mass deportations of Russian civilians. A gigantic migration is going on in the Eastern an'd Western Ukraine, where 1,090,000 Russian peasants in horse-drawn carts, with their wives and children, are moving westward, he said.