NAZI CLAIM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 August 1941, Page 6

NAZI CLAIM

CAPTURE OF RAILWAY JUNCTION ' I AFTER DAYS OF BATTLE. DEATH OF GENERAL RUNDSTEDT DENIED. (Ey Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day. 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, August 27. A special German communique claims the capture of the railway junction of Velikie Luki, after a battle lasting for several days, between Smolensk and Lake Ilmen, in which the bulk of the 22nd Soviet Army was destroyed. 40,000 Russians being killed and 30,000 taken prisoner. The communique adds that operations between Lake Ihnen and the Gulf of Finland, before Tallinn and on the Finnish front continue to proceed successfully. The Berlin radio stated that German infantry captured Borislav after fierce hand-to-hand fighting. Each house and street had to be conquered. The German News Agency reports that light units of the Soviet Blacjf Sea Fleet daringly carried out a sortie into the lower reaches of the Dnieper. German artillery sank fifteen gunboats. A Budapest message says the Russians have launched’ a counter-attack on the Lower Dnieper, “with all available forces.” The Vichy News Agency reports that a huge fire, steadily increasing in intensity, has been raging since last night on the south coast of the Gulf of Finland. It is thought to indicate that the Russians are preparing to evacuate Tallinn. The Moscow radio announced that General Rundstedt (German commander in the Ukraine) had been killed. The radio added that it was rumoured that a German officer had murdered him. A Berlin spokesman declared that the report that General Rundstedt had been killed was nonsense. A Moscow correspondent states that not a single German bomb has yet dropped on Leningrad. A large-scale Luftwaffe attack on August 26 was repulsed.