City Improving Its Defences

Evening Star, Issue 24283, 26 August 1942, Page 5

City Improving Its Defences

Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright

LONDON, August 25. The latest despatches describing the German advance south-east of Kletskaya towards Stalingrad say that the enemy brought up heavy reinforcements of armoured forces and infantry, and appears determined to take Stalingrad regardless of cost.

(Received noon.)

Meanwhile Stalingrad is improving its defences, and the population,, following the precedents set by the people of Moscow and Leningrad under similar circumstances, is carrying on vital war work at full pressure, despite the numerous air raid alerts. The port is working at full capacity, receiving oil and food from the south and arms from the north.

A further message states: On the Stalingrad side of the Don, Russian troops are lighting tense tank and infantry battles, and enemy attacks have been repulsed. Moscow describes the position as complicated.

Russian warships in the Black Sea have sunk a 0,000-ton enemy warship. A Russian morning communique reports that fighting is continuing in -the region of Prokladnaya, 70 miles east of the point where the line to Ordzhouokidze branches off the BostovBaku line. It is considered in London, however, that Russian resistance is stiffening in the Caucasus, and attention is directed to the area south-east of Eletskaya, where the Germans have thrown large forces of tanks and infantry across the Don, and to the wedge in the Russian defences at Kotelnikovo east of the river. The Russians are inflicting heavy losses on the Germans.