VIENNA ENCIRCLED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 65, Issue 154, 12 April 1945, Page 5

VIENNA ENCIRCLED

GERMANS RESIST STRONGLY. THE FIGHTING IN BRESLAU. HAND-TO-HAND IN CELLARS (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright.) (Rec. 11,20 a.m.) LONDON, April 11V Vienna has been encircled but the battle for the city is not altogether ended, says Reuter’s correspondent at Moscow. Groups of Germans are still resisting strongly, elite formations holding out to the end. Nevertheless large sections of the city enjoy a new freedom. Austrians are coming from shelters to welcome* the Russians, hanging out flags. The Austrian Freedom Movement is reported to have played an important role in the Red Army’s advance across Austria. Information available to-day indicates that the Freedom Movement was formed at a conference in the Alps in 1942, after which guerillas started to fight while Austrian military formations took part in operations in Yugoslavia.

The Russians who have entered Moravia have reached the Morava Rifer at a new point opposite Hodoriin, ;which they are preparing to storm as it is one of the keypoints defending Brno, 30 miles away. v "V

A Russian war correspondent with Marshal Zhukov’s army on the Oder forces of Cossack cavalry are now on opposite Berlin, reports, that large the move.

Bitter hand-to-hand fighting is going on in cellars and tunnels under Breslau, state correspondents with 1 Marshal Koniev’s troops. Here Russians aftd Germans fight in clammy darkness lighted only by the flashes of rifle fire and of exploding grenades. The Germans are widening and deepening the cellars and tunnelling whole streets to connect them. Meanwhile the Russians above ground are routing the Germans from buildings only by systematic heavy gunfire or dynamiting. Members of two delegations of citizens who called on the Nazi Gauleiter to cease fighting were executed.