FINNS TAKE INITIATIVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 January 1940, Page 5

FINNS TAKE INITIATIVE

FIGHTING ON MANNERHEIM LINE INTENSIFIED

Strong Points Captured

ENEMY DETACHMENTS THROWN BACK RUSSIAN NAVAL BASE RAIDED (By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright.) - HELSINKI, January 29. The lighting’ on the Mannerlieim. Line has intensified but Hie initiative has passed to the Finns. A Finnish communique states: “Fighting is tierce northeast of Lake Ladoga. We repulsed all attacks and captured strong points, killing 800 and capturing 160 men and much war material. We threw back enemy detachments attempting a turning movement on the Aittojoki sector and killed 450 men. “ We drove off four air raids on Helsinki.”

Russian planes subjected Turku (a port in south-west Finland) to an unprecedented raid all morning, killing 28 persons and wounding 46 and setting fire to houses. The Finns shot down four of the raiders.

Thirty Finnish and Italian planes participated in raids on the Russian naval base of Krondstadt, where docks and ships were extensively damaged.

A Russian air raid on the southern port of llanko killed :>0 and injured 200 persons. Fifteen Russian planes were shot down. One fell in Helsinki harbour. Together with the raids on the capital, other planes bombed 10 localities in Helsinki county and also Salo and coastal towns on the Gulf of Bothnia. They dropped 250 bombs, but there were only minor casualties and damage. The British United Press, describing the ruthless Russian aerial bombing of a Red Cross hospital in Karelia, says that lour nurses and 19 soldiers were killed and seven saved. Fire entrapped and burnt the others to death.

The raiders, ignoring the Red Cross plainly marking the roof, dropped a bomb in the centre of the building, igniting it from end to end. The wounded never had a chance.

The hospital stood on the outskirts of a little village remote from any military objective. Those saved comprised two nurses and five soldiers. One of the latter related how when the bomb burst, he seized his crutches and, though wounded, tumbled from his bed and yelled to his cotmates, some of whom were powerless to move. He and a comrade, who was burnt, hobbled to the stairhead, where they tainted. A doctor rushed up the blazing steps and dragged them to safetv.

WORST YET

AIR RAIDS ON FINLAND ANY OBJECT ATTACKED. NUMBER OF BOMBERS BROUGHT DOWN. Reports of Russian air raids in Finland on Monday, which arrived in Helsinki throughout the night, reveal that these raids may turn out to be the worst so far experienced. Not only were towns bombed and

machine-gunned, but also villages, isolated farms and peasants’ homes in Southern Finland. Even horses and cattle were machine-gunned. Houses are burning in many places.

The estimates of the casualties vary, but they are likely to be higher than those already revealed from Helsinki, which placed the dead at 30 and the injured at 50.

It is believed that between 10 and 15 Soviet bombers were brought down in these raids.

Finnish reports estimate that the Russians dropped 3000 bombs in 46 different localities last week resulting in 24 deaths and 56 persons being injured.—By radio.