PUNCHING A DENT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 64, Issue 212, 19 June 1944, Page 4

PUNCHING A DENT.

RUSSIANS AT MANNERHEIM LINE

v WEEK OF BOMBS AND SHELLS V

; (Rec. 10.10 a.m.) LONDON, June 18. - Russian troops are punching a dent *;in the central sector of the Mannervlheim Line at a point south-east of which is on the direct approach to Viipori* and only 20 miles ifrnm that town, says Reuter’s correspondent at Moscow. The depth of the dent it ‘not yet known, but once com- ' bined the Red Army tanks, artillery and.infantry are assembled before what is believed to be the last of the Finnish. ..fortified zones it should be liable to very swift exploitation. The Finnish Command nevertheless cherishes the hope of holding the Red Army by means of the original Mannerheim defence line, as it did for a period in the Russian-Finnish tv ar of 1939-40. The Finns along the rest of the front after a week of hurricane bombing and shelling, are trying to stage some kind of orderly withdrawal into the Mannerheim defences as the Red Army closes in on either flank. There has been a series of bitter rearguard actions in the last 24 hours within 10 miles of the Mannerheim line’s main anchor at Kiovisto. --■'-■The' British United Press correspondent at Stockholm quotes a German report as saying that the Red Air Force made a big _ilQUlile_—attack against Deitel’s supply lines on the Arctic front. The German News Agency reported a Russian raid against a German convoy off Kirkenes, a Norwegian port in the Arctic, near border.