Violent African Battle

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 102, 1 May 1943, Page 5

Violent African Battle

LONDON, April 30. In Tunisia the German counter-attacks have increased in violence. The ding-dong' battle is still raging* all along' the front with the Allies registering small advances in the north and south and the Germans forcing' us back slightly in the centre. The latest news of the fighting comes from the French. On the northern Tunisian coast, French Moroccan troops have advanced a further two and a hall." miles, and from their positions on the hills they can now sec the white houses of the great enemy base of Bizerta, 25 miles away. In the south the French are mopping- up captured ground near Pont dv Fahs. They have stormed the eastern ridge of a hill which lies south-east of the great enemy communication centre. But it is in the centre of the Axis bridgehead, on the First Army front, that the fighting has again been fiercest. The Germans have been throwing1 in one heavy counter-attack after another, and have succeeded in driving our men off the summit of a 700-foot hill which dominates a long- stretch of the Tebourba road.

A correspondent says that yesterday the Germans were throwing in tanks on the south side of the hill, and that 10 of the tanks penetrated our positions. Further down the front, General Anderson's men have captured a hill •which commands the main road to Tunis, and still further south men of the First Army are battling fiercely on the slopes of yet another hill, which dominates the approach to the wide plains of Tunis. Correspondents en.phasise the fact that the present fighting in Tunisia is almost entirely a battle for hills. The Germans are clinging like limpets to the heights dominating vital roads and flat ground on which our tanks could operate with ease. Allied headquarters announce that General Eisenhower has returned to Algiers after an extensive tour of the forward area with General George Clark, the head of the British supply service.