FIRST ROUND WON

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 12, 14 July 1943, Page 5

FIRST ROUND WON

SOVIET'S PERIL NO GREATER

Rec. 12.30 p.m. LONDON, July 13. "Red Star" says that it was Russian Guards who, in one sector of the Byelgorod area, recaptured their original positions while Soviet troops on the Orel-Kursk front captured a line of German trenches and later they beat back a panzer attack. The paper added that the battle on the Byelgorod front was daily becoming more acute and that the Germans were suffering heavy losses in tanks and planes as their attacks were repeatedly flung back.

One Moscow correspondent says that desperate fighting has been raging east of Byelgorod for the last two days with General Rokossovsky's armoured units smashing repeated panzer attacks to force a crossing of the Upper Donets, which runs east of Byelgorod. Attack and counter-attack are still follovying each other in rapid succession in one of the most violent battles of the war as the Germans hurl in more tanks, planes, and masses of infantry.

"Isvestia" states that Russian artillerymen on the Byelgorod front, in a three-day battle, knocked out 62 tanks and silenced 32 artillery and 14 mortar batteries. They also repulsed 36 German panzer and infantry attacks.

In London military observers consider that the Russians have won the first round and that on the ninth day of the offensive the danger is no greater than it was on the first day of the attack.