TWO-DAY BATTLE WON

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 67, 16 September 1943, Page 5

TWO-DAY BATTLE WON

Russians Take Nezhiri

Rec. 11.15 a.m,

RUGBY, September 15,

■*■ Stalin, in. an Order of the Day to General Rokossovsky, states: "Continuing- their offensive, troops on the central front, after two days of fierce engagements, today occupied the large railway town of Nezhin, a most important centre of enemy resistance on the way to Kiev."

Nezhin, 80 miles north-east of Kiev, is 130 miles from the starting line of the Russian summer offensive. Its capture further lengthens the point of the Russian spearhead and aggravates the Germans' difficulties in moving troops along their front between the centre and the south.

The Red Army has forced a new that the Russians, in their attack £ *i_ T>« r» j • against the other two junctions, have crossing ot the Kiver Desna and is already captured Mlokhvitsa, twentyswelling the forces engaged in five miles from the Poltava-Kiev railv ..i ..i .i n ■ *L ' 4 way> and are advancing determinedly battle with the Germans on the west ag ainst Losovaya from Barvenkova. bank. The Russian forces are only eighteen _. . ~. ~: . „■ miles from. Losovaya.' By day and night ferries, rafts, Outer's correspondent emphasises canoes, and boats bore masses of men that the fall of Nezhin greatly intensiand equipment across the wide deep fies threat to Kiev, which is also water of the Desna River, despite in- increasingly, endangered by the Rustensified Luftwaffe operations. As the s j an thrust towards-Priluki. The GerSoviet bridgehead was widened, hour m ans realise the'threat to Priluki, and by hour, on the west bank, the Ger- are throwing in a fresh division to mans launched furious counter-attacks attempt to regain the lost positions, totalling 25 in one sub-sector alone. but the Red Army still holds the Three hundred German tommy- initiative there. The United Press says gunners were mown down by Soviet the fall of Bryansk threatens the rifle and machine-gun fire. The heaviest entire German position north of the fighting was between the separate Kiev-Kursk railway, because there is bridgeheads which the Red Army is no natural defence line between the steadily widening out along the river Desna River, which traverses the town, to create a single massive vantage and the Dnieper, 150 miles to the west, ground in the area of Novgorod The Russians are still pouring across Seversky, half-.way between Bryansk the Desna River in the face of murand Nezhin. . derous fire and constant bombing.

In the Nezhin area, on the KieyKonotop railway, one of the two main thrusts towards Kiev is developing. The other, 50 miles to the south, is less clearly defined, but seems to be aimed at the Ukranian capital along the Poltava-Kiev line.

Heavy rains in the direction of Pavlograd have slowed up operations which are completing the liberation of the Kharkov region. Soviet tanks and motorised infantry have been badly hit by rains, but infantry units are taking up the fight by night as well as by day.—B.O.W. LONDON, September 15. In the lower Ukraine, the.Russians have advanced up to ten miles at several points and occupied from 200 to 250 towns and villages. Two of these places are only 50 miles from the great industrial centre of Zaporozhe, in the Dnieper bend.

The Germans are still harping on developments in the corner of the Kuban which they yet hold. In fact today's German High Command communique opened with a reference to that front and said that the fighting continued to be lively. This evening, the German radio said that Soviet troops had penetrated into the northeastern suburbs of Novorossisk.