CORRIDOR WIDENED

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 105, 30 October 1942, Page 5

CORRIDOR WIDENED

GRADUAL ALLIED PROGRESS

LONDON, October 29. Reuters Cairo correspondent says that the fact that a tank clash occurred on Tuesday indicated that the corridor driven into the enemy's. front has been sufficiently widened to permit tank manoeuvres. This is, perhaps, the beginning of the' second phase—a phase in which the threat to sections of the enemy line forces him to armoured combat.

"Progress may seem slow and information meagre," the correspondent adds, "but the wave of our attack daily washes a little further up the enemy beach."

Berlin radio said: "Enemy bomber formations have been coming over for days in parade formation without deviating an inch, surrounded by swarms of fighters which hover in the air like bees. We have never seen/such a picture."

The British United Press correspondent with the Eighth Army says: "Yesterday's tank battle developed after Rommel threw tanks against ,the positions we had captured on the previous night. The infantry held on and enabled our tanks to come up and drive the Germans off. It was not an allout armoured engagement, but headquarters states that, the Germans received a substantial blow. The clash occurred at the point where *we achieved the deepest penetration. "Field-Marshal Rommel has a strong screen of 88mm. guns behind which is grouped the main weight of his armour. The screen of artillery must be breached frontally or turned by a flanking move. Neither alternative is easy.

"Our sappers are toiling at the task of cleaning up enemy minefields to give our armoured supply vehicles room to manoeuvre and dispense. Meanwhile, Italian and German sappers are equally busy sowing new minefields to plug threatening gaps and slow up our progress generally."