Russians Force Pace In Hungary

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 251, 23 October 1944, Page 5

Russians Force Pace In Hungary

ESCAPE GAP NARROWED

Budapest Brought Under Threat Of Two Armies a »

(N.Z.P.A.—Copyright.—Rec. 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, October 22. * Russian artillery concentration has reached an unprecedented high mark on the eve of decisive battles in central Europe, states a Moscow message quoted by British Official Wireless., In many sectors of the offensive the number of guns per kilometre is nearly 300. Twenty thousand guns participated in one of the latest Red Army's operations. , The Red Army, massed around a curve of 170 miles facing the Danube bend, appears to be embarking on the last days of the battle of the Hungarian Plain, states Reuters correspondent in Moscow. Marshal Malinovsky is now forcing the pace. His left wing has reached the Danube at Baja and his right wing is near the Czech border, thus developing a great sickle-like movement, bringing Budapest under dual threat. The capture by the Russians of Baja, on the eastern bank of the Danube, has completed their first enveloping movement in the Danube area. They are now striking out for others farther north in a series of overlapping drives. Reuters military correspondent, commenting on the capture by the Russians of the railway junction of Nyiregyhaza, in the north-east of Hungary, as announced in an Order of the Day by Marshal Stalin, states that Marshal Malinovsky has virtually strangled the further German retreat from the pocket in Northern Transylvania. The Order of the Day, addressed to Marshal MaEnovsky* states: "Troops of the Second Ukrainian Front to-day, as the result of an attack carried out by cavalry and tank formations, captured the town of Nyiregyhaza, an important communication junction and powerful stronghold of enemy resistance in the Hungarian territory." Nyiregyhaza is about 50 miles north of Debrechen and 125 miles east-north-east of Budapest. » The capture of Nyiregyhaza has also narrowed the escape gap between the armies of Marshal 'Malinovsky and General Petrov to less than 80 miles. Nyiregyhaza is only 20 miles from the Czech border and is the junction for two main railways across the Carpathians from Lwow to Hungary. They link up at Nyiregyhaza with other railways, the most important of which runs westward from Northern Transylvania. Thus the Russians have cut the Germans' main escape route from Transylvania, limiting the German retreat through the gap to secondary lines across Southern Slovakia.