WIDE AREAS RAIDED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 January 1940, Page 5

WIDE AREAS RAIDED

TWENTY KILLED & FORTY WOUNDED FINNISH & RUSSIAN REPORTS. SOVIET DENIES SERIOUS LOSSES. Bj Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. LONDON, January 12. A Finnish communique states: “Patrols were active on the front line on the Karelian Isthmus. We heavily repulsed the Russians on the eastern frontier and destroyed 12 tanks and three armoured cars. Our batteries at Lake Ladoga shelled Russian concentrations.” Four hundred Russian planes raided wide areas, killing 20 persons and wounding 40. The Finns brought down three planes at Tuku. An air battle accompanied, activity round Salmijarvi, and important operations are developing north of Lake Ladoga. The Russian communique recounts the activities of scouting parties and infantry units, and says there was artillery fire on all fronts. Moscow offially denies substantial changes on the Finnish front and declares that the past three weeks' operations, during which the Finns claimed to have annihilated three divisions, were confined to reconnaissance and small infantry action. It admits that the cold facilitated the Finns’ position but says that they failed to profit by it. The Finns nowhere reached the Soviet frontier, and the claim about wiping out the 44th division was fantastic. The division had only 10,000 men and had lost only 900.