PORT OF TUNIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 December 1942, Page 3

PORT OF TUNIS

ALMOST OUT OF ACTION RESULTS OF CONCENTRATED BOMBING. % TRIPOLI MORE AND MORE VULNERABLE. (By Telegraph—i Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, December 17. Tunis has almost been put out of action 'as a port in an 8/2 hours’ raid on Tuesday night. The “Daily Mail's" Cairo correspondent said that flight after flight rained high explosives on the canal through which all the shipping must pass to the quays, and the canal was partially blocked by violent explosions. Huge fires lit the sky as bombs hit an oil depot, barracks, railway marshals ling yards and harbour installations. In spite of the duration and scale of the attacks all the bombers returned. The Cairo correspondent of “The Times" says that the Allied air forces are ensuring that Rommel will get precious little relief from his supply ports. Having rendered Tripoli practically unusable, the main attention is now being devoted to performing a similar operation on Tunis. With Tripoli growing more and more vulnerable to Allied air attacks, a British official Wireless message states, thei enemy may 'soon be obliged to rely increasingly on Tunis as the supply base for his armies on both sides of the North African bridgehead. Special importance is attached, therefore, to the Allied bombing attacks in the past four days on Tunis and the nearby island of La Goulette. Reconnaissance has shown that, the canal linking the docks at Tunis'with the island has been partially blocked.