BATTLE GOES ON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 156, 3 July 1940, Page 8

BATTLE GOES ON.

FOR ITALIAN FORT. Enemy Reinforce Position At Capuzzo. SYMBOLIC IMPORTANCE. (Received 12.30 p.m.) RUGBY, July 2. The latest official information regarding East African operations is contained in communiques issued today in Cairo and Nairobi. The former one says operations are continuing in the Fort Capuzzo and Sidiazseiz area, in the western desert, between British advanced troops and the enemy, who have been reinforced.

In Somaliland British patrols successfully raided Barumo. On the other fronts there is nothing to report.

A Nairobi communique says the Italians launched a third attack against Moyale, on the Kenya-Abyssinian frontier, at 3 p.m. yesterday, but made no progress. • The situation was quiet at 6 p.m. During the attack British aircraft again bombed military targets in the neighbourhood of Italian Moyale with good results, direct hit's being o6» tained. During the night the front was quiet.

A cable message says the second battle for Capuzzo, an Italian fort in the Libyan desert, began last Saturday after an Italian force had reoccupied the shattered shell of the fort, which the British captured on June 14, blew up and evacuated, taking away valuable plans, lorries and motor cycles.

The Italians moved in again last Friday with 1000 non-native troops, 16 tanks and a number of field guns.

The British again attacked on Saturday, field guns shelling the Italian batteries while a ring of tanks closed in on the fort.

The Italian guns scored only one hit in an hour and a half, but British shells made a huge gap in the walls of the fort.

Tanks awaited the coming of darkness to rush the fort, but the Italian resistance stiffened.

The battle for Capuzzo was described by a British Broadcasting Corporation observer as being the greatest so far in the Middle East. The fort, it was etated, is not of great strategic value, but of much symbolic Importance. The eyes of the whole Moslem world are fixed on this desert attack.