ATTACKS REPELLED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 August 1942, Page 3

ATTACKS REPELLED

AND LOSSES INFLICTED ON ENEMY BATTLES IN THE DON BEND. SOME RUSSIAN SUCCESSES IN NORTHERN AREAS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day> 10.20 a.m.) RUGBY, August 16. The latest official news of the fighting on the Caucasian front is contained in a supplement, to the midday Russian communique which says that in the region, south-east of Kletskaya. in the Don bend, Soviet troops repelled numerous enemy attacks and Soviet artillery inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. In one sector of this front five enemy tanks penetrated the Russian positions. One Soviet gun crew destroyed three of them. In another sector Soviet artillery destroyed 26 lorries containing enemy infantry. In the region of Krasnodar, some 50 miles north-east of the Black Sea port of Novorossisk, German infantry, supported by their air force, are attempting to erect a bridgehead over the River Kuban. The Soviet Air Force has constantly attacked and destroyed the river crossing, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. A body of 150 German automatic riflemen, who succeeded in crossing the river, were annihilated.

In the region of Maikop, the first but smallest of the three main Caucasian oil centres to be reached by the Germans, Russian troops repelled one enemy attack, annihilated 400 enemy officers and men and destroyed eleven tanks and 24 lorries.

In the region of Mineralnye Vodi the enemy, with numerically superior forces, pushed back one Soviet unit. During this engagement six enemy tanks were destroyed and 250 enemy officers and men were killed. In the region of Voronezh. Russian troops pushed forward and killed 1,200 enemy officers and men. On the western bank of the Don, after an hour’s artillery shelling, two battalions of

Hungarians attacked the Soviet positions. They were met by mortar and machine-gun fire, were routed and compelled to retreat', leaving on the battlefield several hundred killed and wounded.

On the Bryansk front, one enemy infantry regiment, supported by one motorised infantry battalion,, attacked Russian positions. The Soviet troops launched a counter-attack and dislodged the enemy from one locality. Germans sent against Leningrad district partisans included about 2,000 infantry, supported by ten tanks, two armoured cars and a large number of planes. The partisans defeated the enemy. Taking advantage of mountainous country at Mineralyne Vodi, the Germans are trying to outflank the Soviet defences concentrated in the gorges behind the hills, but the active Soviet defence is frequently frustrating the enemy’s plans. The “Pravda” says the Nazis, as previously, are concentrating their main forces in narrow sectors, seeking to break through the defence at any price.