MALAYAN OFFENSIVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 8, 10 January 1942, Page 7

MALAYAN OFFENSIVE

Big Losses By Both Sides

LONDON, January 9. There have been heavy casualties on both sides in Malaya. The fighting is severe in the Slim River district, about 50 miles north of Kuala Lumpur. The Japanese are attacking with tanks and lorry-borne infantry. x In a dispatch from this front a correspondent says that the slaughter of*the Japanese in some areas is unbelievable. The concentrated fire of the Imperial forces has mowed them down as they attacked in waves. "The Japanese," says the correspondent, "will face anything: except cold steel." The enemy in the Selangor avea evidently had a complete knowledge of the" roads through the rubber estates, which enabled them to launch surprise attacks in armoured vehicles.

The Axis statements of yesterday that, the Japanese had occupied Kuala Lumpur were modified today. A Tokio dispatch to the official German news agency merely says that violent fighting is in progress there and that the British are still apparently trying to hold the town against Japanese forces approaching from the north. An Indian Army officer has told in New Delhi of the splendid work of the Punjabi and Ghui'ka battalions during the fighting in Malaya. A Punjabi1 battalion was withdrawing to new-positions-, and the Japanese, believing that they had them in full retreat, followed up with tanks and armoured cars. The Punjabis were ordered to counter-attack. JAPANESE SUFFER. The leading tank was knocked out, and the rest of the enemy machines suffered heavily. Machine-gunning also inflicted heavy casualties. A Ghurka battalion patrolling the jungle surprised a party of Japanese and killed or wounded many of them. •Today's Tokio communique admits that a Japanese freighter of over 2000

tons was torpedoed and sunk by M submarine off a peninsula south of Tokio. The situation created by the Japanese occupation of tin and rubber area* in Malaya was reviewed today bys Singapore radio. The statement say* that 60 to 70 per cent, of the Malayan' tin production is no longer available to either British or Japanese. The rest is available to the British only. Of the rubber production 50 per cent, is no (longer available to the Empire, and the other half is only availableta the Japanese under considerable difficulties. ' ••.■'■■' ENEMY PLANES LOST. In Burma 35 Japanese • planes have been destroyed for certain by the Allied air forces since the war in the Far East began. This total was reached yesterday when American planes destroyed seven enemy light bombera on the ground at an aerodrome in Thailand. Mr. C. R, Attlee, Lord, Privy' Seal, said today that the appointment of a supreme commander-in-chief for the: south-west Pacific necessitated a re-1 view of the functions of Mr. Duff' Cooper, Britain's special envoy in the Far East. , :