ALLIED THRUST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1943, Page 3

ALLIED THRUST

IN EAST MEDITERRANEAN ANTICIPATED BY TURKISH OBSERVERS. PREPARATORY GUERILLA WARFARE. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) : NEW YORK, May 24. Increasing guerilla warfare is sweeping Crete. Greece. Yugoslavia. Albania and western Bulgaria, reports the "New York Times’ Istanbul, correspondent. Military officials in Istanbul believe that the wave of terrorism is being directed from the Allied headquarters in the Middle East, and that it is aimed at impairment of the Axis rear in preparation of a general Allied offensive in the eastern Mediterranean.

The correspondent says that the Italian Second Army is reported to be withdrawing from Croatia, south Bosnia. Dalmatia and Montenegro, leaving the 200-mile western flank of the Bulgarian army of occupation in Macedonia and Greece exposed to the powerful and apparently co-ordinated Yugoslav, Greek and Albanian guerillas.

The Ankara correspondent of the “Sunday Times" says that military circles in Turkey are struck by the in sufficiency of the Axis defence measures in the Balkans. The correspondent adds that this may be explained by three considerations: (1) Germany is uncertain where the Allied invasion is coming, and hesitates to put all her eggs in one basket; (2) even if Germany would like to take sufficient measures she lacks the manpower; and (3) the Russian campaign is still the main preoccupation of the German military circles.