FOR FINAL ASSAULT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 82, 6 April 1944, Page 5

FOR FINAL ASSAULT

RUSSIAN ARMIES READY

LONDON, April .5. The two Russian armies, closing in on Odessa from the north-east and east, are ready for a final assault, says Reuters Moscow' correspondent. Other Russian forces are moving across the last two miles to Razdelnaya, the key junction on the German garrison's last escape railway from Odessa. The fall of Razdelnaya would mean that the remnants of yon Kleist's 200,000 men would be virtually trapped inside Odessa, being left with only indifferent roads and the minor line linked with the rear by the Dniester estuary ferry. ([The junction has now been taken by the Russians.]

Meanwhile, the two -battles of annihilation continue at the northern end of the southern battlefront. The Russians at Tarnopol are cleaning up the remnants of the German garrison in savage street fighting through the last quarter of the town remaining in German hands.

Sixty miles to the south-east, in the Skala pocket, the trapped German divisions are melting away hourly under non-stop Russian artillery, infantry, and tank attacks. The trapped Germans, after massing large forces of panzers- and infantry on a narrow front, counter-attack-ed in an effort to break the ring, but were repulsed, and the Russians further tightened the ring. Paris radio, quoting a Berlin report, states that the Russians brought up five fresh divisions and launched an attack between Pskov and Ostrov, out were repelled. Berlin radio says that the Russians are trying to cross the Pripet Marshes about the headwaters of- the Styr River, south of Pinsk and southeast of Brest Litovsk.