GROWING TENSER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1942, Page 4

GROWING TENSER

SITUATION IN SOUTH RUSSIA MORE ENEMY CLAIMS CROSSING OF KUBAN RIVER. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.25 p.m.) LONDON, August 5; The situation on the southern front is hourly growing tenser, says a message from Moscow this afternoon. Fighting of unparalleled violence has been raging daily and nightly, German parachutists are supporting motorised forces on the Bielaya Giina front, where the Germans throughout the night hurled' in mixed forces, which broke through at several points. The Vichy radio said the German advance across the Upper Kuban River suggests that the Axis forces in the Southern Don area have diverted their advance towards Astrakhan. A German communique states that German and Rumanian divisions are nearing the Yeisk-Tikhoretsk railway on a broad front and adds: “We have stormed and occupied the important railway junction of Kavkaskaya and reached the Kuban River on a sixtymile front, and northward of Armavir have established bridgeheads on the west bank of the Kuban River. The Berlin radio claims that, a German advanced column is within thirteen miles of Armavir and that another, speeding from Kavkaskaya, is within fifty miles of Krasnodar A German communique reports tnat hard fighting is going on near Rzhev, where the Russians are making strong assaults. The communique says Soviet attacks on the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts broke down.