EIGHTH ARMY FORCES NEARING TUNISIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 January 1943, Page 3

EIGHTH ARMY FORCES NEARING TUNISIA

Small Enemy Ships Blasted at Zuara OTHERS DESTROYED IN SICILIAN CHANNEL AXIS ATTACK IN CENTRAL TUNISIA HALTED LONDON, January 25. General Montgomery’s advanced troops are now well westward of Tripoli, but it is clear from today’s official news that they had not reached the Tunisian frontier up to yesterday, when some enemy remnants were still 30 miles inside Tripolitania. The Germans are making desperate efforts to use the small port of Zuara as an evacuation centre, but British fighterbombers have made these attempts costly for enemy ships. An enemy airfield 20 miles over the border in Tunisia was subjected to intensive air attacks and another airfield, 45 miles further on, at Medenine, was attacked by aircraft both from the east and the west. Sicily is another key target. Harbours, airfields, power stations and railways are being repeatedly raided day and night. Even more important than land targets are the attacks on the Axis sea lanes. Every ship sent to the bottom in the Sicilian Narrows is equal to a very considerable success on land. At least two enemy vessels were sent to the bottom on Saturday night. They were hit by torpedoes from naval aircraft. One ship broke into two and the other was left burning. An escorting destroyed which put up a barrage was hiSt by a bomb and the barrage stopped. In Tunisia the Axis advance on the central sector has been stopped. ’ . Further south, the fact that British and American troops have raided Axis positions west of Sfax suggests that Rommel’s escape gap may be only 25 miles wide—that the distance between the position raided and the coast. The Americans took 80 prisoners and in another sector the British took 50 prisoners. An enemy U-boat was rammed and sunk in the Mediterranean recently by a corvette of the Royal Canadian Navy.