MANDALAY IN SIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 49, 27 February 1945, Page 5

MANDALAY IN SIGHT

FOURTEENTH ARMY PUSH

Rec. 12.30 p.m. BOMBAY, Feb. 26. While troops of the Fourteenth Army continue to meet strong opposition, forward patrols are now within sight of the pagoda tops of Mandalay, says a correspondent of the Australian Associated Press. Mandalay is hidden from the main body of troops by hills in which nests of Japanese are making the most of the natural defensive advantages.

Heavy fighting continues in all sectors of the central Burma front, but progress is being maintained everywhere. In Arakan West Africans pushing south from Kangaw are making for the road junction of An. from which a pass 4000 feet high stretches across the mountains to Minbu, on the Irrawaddy. An is only 10 miles from Ru-Ywa, from which troops of the Fifteenth Indian Division are smashing their way in an effort to cut the pass behind the Japanese retreating before the West Africans.

Meanwhile the Japanese put in their first counter-attack of any real strength on the bridgehead. Hand-to-hand fighting developed before they were beaten off.