BELFORT DRIVE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 215, 11 September 1944, Page 5

BELFORT DRIVE

ALLIES CONVERGING Battle For South-West Gate To Germany Near Rec = 1.30 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 10. French troops from General Patch's Riviera invasion armies, pushing northward to increase the weight of the Allied drive against Germany, are 15 miles from the Belfort Gap, says Reuters correspondent. Berlin radio stated that five Allied divisions are poised for assault on the Gap. Reuters correspondent adds that the French left flank is nine miles from Dijon. Other French forces, advancing parallel with the Americans, who are heading for the Belfort Gap, are skirting the Swiss border and engaging in heavy fighting in the Blamont area. They are about 15 miles due south of the Belfort Gap, across which the Allied barrier is swinging as the German resistance weakens. In the Doubs Valley German resistance is stiffening before the increasing threat of a junction of General Patch's and General Patton's forces. The Seventh Army has made further substantial advances against stiff resistance northward toward Dijon and north-eastward up the Doubs River Valley, in Eastern France, reports an Allied communique. The French have pushed some kilometres to the north after the capture' of Beaune. Autun, 40 miles to the south-west of Dijon, has been occupied. Pont de Riode, which the French occupied, is nine miles south of Belfort. We have taken about 70,000 prisoners since the beginning of the campaign in Southern France. Of these 70,000 prisoners taken in Southern France 40,000 are credited to the French as the result of the capture of Toulon and Marseilles.