SNOW DEFIED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 January 1941, Page 5

SNOW DEFIED

GREEKS CONTINUE THRUST IN ALBANIA

ADVANCE IN KELCYRA AREA.

ITALIANS MANNING FORTIFIED LINE.

ißy Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright ! LONDON. January 15.

Defying snowstorms and the intense cold, the Greeks continued to thrust back the Italians in the Kelcyra area. According to the ’’Daily Telegraph’s" Athens correspondent, the somewhat improvised nature of the Italian coun-ter-attacks indicates desperate efforts to regain the strategic advantages sacrificed as a result of the loss of Kelcyra.

Activity has been resumed in the Pogradec sector, but the weather conditions are largely keeping both armies snowbound. Frostbite is causing a large percentage of the Greek casualties.

The Athens correspondent of "The Times" says there is unlikely to be any sensational news from the Albanian front for some days. Snow is again falling, though the weather has greatly improved in the coastal sector, in which artillery actions have continued for the last two days, while the Greeks scored a certain advance. The Italians' retreat north from Kelcyra is no longer a flight. They are resisting from previously prepared positions fortified with double rows of barbed wire. Here and also to the east in the Moskopolis sector Italian aircraft attempted to aid their field troops, but very small results were achieved because it was difficulty to distinguish Italians from Greeks ‘in the confused terrain.