ASSAULT ON RZHEV

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 August 1942, Page 3

ASSAULT ON RZHEV

RUSSIANS APPROACHING HEART OF CITY IN SPITE OF DESPERATE RESISTANCE. SOVIET TROOPS WELL BACKED BY RESERVES. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) . LONDON, August 28. The latest reports from Moscow claim that the Russians have stormed and captured Rzhev’s northern suburbs, and that street fighting is now in progress near the heart of the city. One Russian force is reported to have by-passed the city. The Moscow correspondent of the “Daily Express” says the Russians have captured Sychevka, on the railway between Rzhev and Viazma, thus cutting a vital German supply line. The Russians yesterday threw back 10 German attacks north-west oi Stalingrad and 11 in the south-west. The Russians operating on the central front promise complete liquidation of the dangerous Rzhev pocketdangerous because Rzhev is a potential springboard for a resumption ol the attacks against Kalinin and Moscow, an earlier message states. Bitter street fighting is raging in Rzhev, and the Germans are putting up a desperate resistance for the city, upon whose very high strategical importance ah correspondents agree. The Russians from the northern outskirts are steadily working their way toward the centre of the town, jfc'ut it is a slow, grim job. The Moscow newspapers .do not hide the sanguinary character of tne fighting nor the bitterness of the German resistance, which the “Pravda” describes as ‘ the strength of despair.” Meanwhile, other Russian forces ate battering southward against t te Rzhev bulge, liberating village after village, and steadily overcoming what the “Daily Telegraph’s” Stockholm correspondent describes as the world s strongest and deepest system of fortifications. . The Stockholm representative oi ’'The Times” describes the Rzhev offensive as of the greatest importance since Marshal Timoshenko s spring move against Kharkov. The conespondent points out that the heavy Russian pressure extends to the. south beyond Kaluga to the Orel region. The British United Press correspondent in Moscow says the scope of the Russian offensive is widening ooth to Ihe north and south of Rzhev, and envelopment of the powerful German

garrison at Gzhatsk (35 miles northeast of Vi azma) is now threatened. The “Izvestia” stresses that the Russian reserves are far from being exhausted ,and says that only a part of those available for the central front operations are at present being used. The Moscow correspondent of “The Times” declares that when the Russian offensive began the Germans had 150,000 first-grade troops esconced in strong positions.