CROAT UPRISING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 51, 28 August 1941, Page 9

CROAT UPRISING

Reported Rout of Italian Regiment

(Rec. 1.15 p.m.) MOSCOW, Aug. 27. A Tass news agency report from Berne states that about 800 Italian soldiers were killed in violent fighting with Croat troops near Dubrovnlk and that a whole Italian regiment was routed. A large-scale movement against the Italians in Croatia is said to be developing.

rifles, grenades, and machine-guns, and the city's shop windows are boarded up, while the people's army, including -achments of girls wearing over-ilis and berets, are daily seen drilling in the streets and squares. Heavilycamouflaged antiaircraft guns continue successfully to protect Leningrad from air attack. The Berlin radio stated yesterday that almost the entire Finnish territory north-east of Lake Ladoga which was surrendered to the Soviet in 1940 is again in Finnish hands. Reports from Helsinki claimed that the Finns have captured Wiborg, and also confirm the capture of Suojarvi and other villages in the Lake Onega sector. Increased activity is reported on the Salla'front, where German and Finnish troops have captured Kieslinki, 65 miles from the MurmanskLeningrad railway, with which it is connected by road and rail. DANGER OF FLANK ATTACK. | Referring to the central front, the Stockholm correspondent of "The

Times" says there is nothing to sug-. gest that the Russian General Koniev'»' operations are part of a major operation on the Smolensk sector, as th« exact locality of the operations is still undisclosed, but apparently the positions between Smolensk and Viazma (95 miles north-east of Smolensk and 140 miles from Moscow) show no noteworthy changes. General Koniev's counter-offensive may have been responsible for the German hesitation to press forward from Gomel, because of the danger of a flank attack. The Russian newspaper "Pravda" says that a vigorous counter-offensive in White Russia has driven the Germans from a big ancient city, unnamed, which the Germans had held for five days. After claiming the fall of Dnepropetrovsk, the Berlin radio last night stated that the German and Rumanian, forces Were mopping up the last Soviet bridgeheads across the southern Dnieper. German dive-bombers and Hungarian batteries, it was said, pounded the remaining bridgeheads on August 24 and 25, and all attempts to stem the attack were frustrated, thousands of Russian dead being strewn along the river banks. The Rumanians were claimed to be pouring fresh reinforcements into the battle for Odessa. According to reports to Moscow, the 3rd Rumanian Infantry Division has been wiped out, while losses in the 15th Division are so enormous that it now practically exists in name only. It is claimed that the losses of German troops in the Ukraine are no less severe; the 9th Panzer Division participated'm only one major engagement in August, in which it lost half of its effectives in killed and wounded.