HELSINKI ABLAZE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 123, 19 February 1944, Page 7

HELSINKI ABLAZE

Raided Three Times By Soviet Bombers (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February 17. A Stockholm message says .that Russian bombers attacked Helsinki three times.last night, causing serious damage and .fires in the centre of the city. The Helsinki correspondent of the Stockholm newspaper “Dagens Nyheter” says that the first attack, made by from 20 to 50 "planes, lasted from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.; the second, by about 100 bombers, from 11 p.m. till after midnight; and the third raid, made with strong formations, began at 1 a.m. and was still in progress at 2 a.m. The Finnish radio reports that more than 400 planes took part in the raid on ■Helsinki. Other aircraft dropped bombs elsewhere in southern Finland. According to newspaper reports, Helsinki is blazing today. The city was in an almost continual state of alert'from 7.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m. today, and the raids were among the heaviest the city has yet suffered. Simultaneously there were reports that M. Paasiviki had left Stockholm for Moscow, but later a Stockholm message declared that he was still in a hotel there today.