FURTHER ADVANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 February 1942, Page 3

FURTHER ADVANCE

RUSSIANS ON LENINGRAD FRONT MORE TOWNS LIBERATED. GERMAN ATTACKS IN UKRAINE SMASHED. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, February 12. A Russian war correspondent reports a further advance on the Leningrad front and the smashing of German counter-attacks in the Ukraine. Round Leningrad nine towns and villages were liberated in. one day's fighting. About 900 of the enemy were reported to be killed. Today’s Soviet communique reports that offensive operations are continuing. A Soviet news agency states that a single Russian guerilla detachment in Ihe past few months captured two towns and killed two German generals, 17 other officers of high rank and 400 n.c.o’s. and men. A Soviet air squadron has also had a busy month. In that time it wiped out 5000 German troops and destroyed 750 lorries and 26 aircraft. INCESSANT HAMMERING RUSSIAN GRIP ROUND KHARKOV CLOSING SLOWLY. HEAVY FIGHTING IN CRIMEA. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, February 11. The Russians continue their incessant hammering from within and from without at the German chain stretched from the Baltic to Lake Ladoga and still barring Leningrad’s land connection with Russia proper. Marshal Timoshenko’s grip is closing slowly around Kharkov. Russian military circles say the Germans have rushed up 15 divisions to this sector. The German radio says heavy fighting is going on also at Sebastopol and Kerch. Dingdong shelling and counter-shelling has resumed at Sebastopol, without apparently altering the position. The “Daily Telegraph’s” Stockholm correspondent says' the news that the Soviet forces fighting north-west of Lake Ilmen have stormed 46 German bunkers and other fortified positions indicates that General Meretskov’s troops are now battling on the outskirts of General von Leeb’s main lines around Leningrad. The Finnish radio says a massed Russian attack has broken the German lines at a point north-west of Lake Ilmen. Messages from Berlin confirm the bitter fighting on the northern front, where a full-scale battle is stated to have been raging for 10 days. The strength of the Russian blows can be judged from a German radio’s description of eight attacks launched on the Leningrad front on February 9, The radio says each attack was a battalion strong and was supported by tanks. The Russians at some points penetrated the German lines, but, according to the radio, the German infantry threw them back. Simultaneously, the Russians from Lake Ladoga’s ice and along the shore are persistently striving to prise Shlusselburg, the end of the investing arc, open or gouge a passage along the shore. “The Times” Stockholm correspondent says that a few days ago this operation appeared to be verging on achievement, but the latest reports do not reflect a deepening or broadening of the penetration which was so successfully begun. Nothing, however, suggests that the Germans have managed to drive out the Russian wedge and the Russian design to begin a rolling movement to liberate Leningrad may yet materialise. Hundreds of nameless battles in which hundreds of nameless heroes are daily slaughtered are again the only feature of the reports, except a German radio report that the Russians are attacking the railway from Stalino to Taganrog, and that heavy fighting is proceeding.