ENEMY STRIKE HARD

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 276, 18 August 1944, Page 5

ENEMY STRIKE HARD

Temporarily Staving Off Russian Threat (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) LONDON, August 16. Counter-attacking east of Warsaw, the Germans in fierce fighting today recaptured the town of Ossow, seven miles from the city, Moscow reports. The Germans also attacked in western Lithuania—west and south-west of Shavli—with large forces of tanks and infantry, but were repulsed.

The Russians have advanced at both ends of the front. They captured 70 places in a push to the north-west behind Lake Peipus. In southern Poland they have broken into the large town, of Sandomierz, which has been hindering the expansion of the bridgehead over the upper Vistula. , , , . The Germans are hitting back hard from the Baltic to the Carpathians in an all-out effort to creek the Red Army s advance to German soil, and. have momentarily succeeded in stabilizing the front on the majority of sectors. The “Red Star” says that German reinforcements have arrived from Norway, Italy and Rumania. The Germans are atteking with stubbornness in the effort to gain time to consolidate the approaches to East Prussia and the heart of Poland.

Renter’s Moscow correspondent reports that the German reinforcements,, though suffering losses while on the way to the front, are big enough to put the Russians on the defensive for the present in the Warsaw and Carpathians sectors. The Exchange Telegraph agency’s correspondent says the Red Air Force retains mastery of the skies not only over the battlefields, but over ,most the vital road and rail communications. The Moscow “Izvestia,” pointing out that now Russian soil is almost wholly liberated, and the work of the guerrillas has virtually ceased, reveals that they killed more than 500,000 Germans in White Russia alone. They held 60 per cent, of White Russia when the Red Army started its offensive in June.