GENERAL RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CONTINUES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 118, 12 February 1940, Page 9

GENERAL RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CONTINUES

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) 1 (Received February 11, 8.30 p.m.) HELSINKI, February 10. The Russians continue to pound the line from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, but the Finns claim not to have yielded a . yard. A Finnish war communique states: “The Soviet maintained the offensive for the ninth successive day without success. The Finns captured 32 tanks and shot down four enemy planes. “The Karelian Isthmus is the scene of violent fighting. Heavy artillery and tanks supported massed Red infantry attacks against the Mannerheim Line, but were thrown back with heavy losses. The Russians lost another 800 men north-east of Lake Ladoga. “The enemy pressure is heaviest on the Summa sector of the Mannerheim Line, but all attacks have been repulsed, while the enemy has lost about SOO killed besides a column of 60 lorries and two tanks. The commander of the 11th Russian Division, Colonel Borisov, was killed. “Weak efforts by the enemy at Suomussalmi were repulsed; and the enemy lost four planes there.”

Reports from Stockholm indicate that the Russians are making a tremendous effort to break through the Mannerheim Line. The attack is going on right across the isthmus and an effort is being made to prevent tlie Finns from getting reinforcements. The Finns have been standing firm, but the intensity of the attack is placing a severe strain on their reserves. In the north the Finns have advanced and have recaptured the nickel mining town which the Russians captured earlier in the war. A Soviet communique claimed an advance resulting in the occupation of a fortified area in the Summa district, while a Stockholm report says that the Russians on February S forced the Mannerheim Line at one point, resulting in hand-to-hand fighting in which they were quickly driven out. Finnish ski patrols captured a number of Russian parachutists behind the lines at Rovaniemi wearing Finnish uniforms and equipped with short-wave radio and equipment for tapping telephone lines. The Finns report that parachute spies are causing much damage by cutting communications and in other ways. A Finnish communique of the Red losses since the outbreak of the war details 327 planes, 594 tanks, 206 guns, 572 cars, lorries and tractors, 63 fieldkitchens, eight ships and one submarine.

The Soviet communique say's that nothing of importance has occurred on any fronts, but that the air force carried out bombing and reconnaissance flights.—By radio.