SECRECY PRESERVED

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 87, 6 January 1940, Page 11

SECRECY PRESERVED

Battle Raging North Of Salla A fierce battle is raging north of Salla states a cable from Stockholm. The Finnish authorities are surrounding the operations with the greatest secrecy. No one is allowed to approach the battle zone. The Finnish headquarters expect that the battle will result similarity to that at Suomussalmi, when the Hussions were heavily defeated. A Helsinki, message states that the Russians have again bombarded the Mannerheim line, where Soviet troops are now digging in. > Otherwise the Soviet offensive appeared to have died down. In the far north, intense cold has put a stop to all operations. Finnish planes are reported to have flown over Leningrad on Wednesday and to have dropped leaflets reporting the recent speech of the Finnish Foreign Minister in reply to M. Molotov. Details are now available of the Russian air raid on Tornio, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, on the Swedish border and some 350 miles north of Helsinki. Reports from Stockholm and Copenhagen state that about 20 Russian planes bombed the outskirts of Tornio and that two of the planes were shot down. The reports add that a railway bridge over a river in this district has been damaged. The river runs into the Gulf of Bothnia and is crossed near its mouth by a railway which goes around the bead of the gulf from Sweden to Finland. The Russians on Wednesday also bombed the port of Oulu, about 100 miles from Tornio. Oulu, like Tornio, is an important railway centre, and these raids are believed to be part of a Russian plan to attack railways and harbours in order to hinder further assistance to Finland. Further details are now available as to how the Finns routed the Russians near Suomussalmi, on the vast central front, a few days ago. The Finns'had no artillery, so worked in small patrols. First they destroyed the Russian field kitchens, then the supplies, then the convoys, and finally the crack troops. Another example of Finnish tadtics is the use made of hundreds of captured Russian tanks. These they partly sank in the ground to make excellent pill-boxes. —By radio.