BIG BUN DRIVE IN UKRAINE SECTOR

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 284, 30 November 1944, Page 5

BIG BUN DRIVE IN UKRAINE SECTOR

DANUBE CROSSED 25-Miic Advance On Front Of 19 Miles Rec. 1.30 p.m. LONDON, Nov. 29. An Order of the Day by Marshal Stalin to General Tolesukin announced that troops of the Third Ukrainian Front having gone over to the offensive crossed the Danube north of the River Drava, broke through the German defences on the western bank of the Danube and advanced 25 miles, enlarging the break-through up to IS miles in width.

In the course of the offensive, Soviet troops occupied in Hungary three towns and important centres of communication, Pecs, Bataszek and Mohacs, and took, in the fighting, over 300 other localities.

Mohacs is 100 miles south of Budapest. Bataszek is 16 miles north of Mohacs, and Pecs is 23 miles west of Mohacs.

The Times Moscow correspondent! says the Russians brought into! play the right wing of General Petrov's forces in Eastern Slovakia, | and Russians and Czechs are now j moving towards Presov. The fall of Stropkov and Svidnik, about ten miles to the north-east, last night, followed pentrations of the defence lines on which the Germans had consolidated strongly after being forced from the Carpathians. The Russians thus widened the breach torn farther south three or four days ago. The Russians are also increasing the pressure west of Uzhorod, in the waterlogged valley of the Dobrog, and its tributaries, where the Germans are floundering in an attempt to save their forces for the defence of Kosice. They lost a battalion hereabouts yesterday. To General Petrov's left, new thrusts are progressing from Hungary. The Russians have already shifted substantial forces over the Tisa River to Bodrog River and the Czechoslovak frontier. There is firmer ground ahead, dominated by the frontier town of Satoraljaushely, the fall of which will open the way for an advance to Kosice complementary to the one progressing from the north-east. ' The Soviet communique states that the Russians occupying Pecs and Bataszek fought their way into 330 other'places, including 14 railway towns. Fighting elsewhere is only of local importance.