THE NINTH DAY

Evening Star, Issue 24916, 14 July 1943, Page 3

THE NINTH DAY

GREAT TANK BATTLES STILL RAGING RUSSIANS ADMIT THREAT TO FLANK (Rec. 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, July 13, Great tank battles continue near Byelgorod, where the Germans are trying to widen the wedge driven into the Soviet defences. The Russians state that all the German thrusts have been beaten back with heavy losses, but the Russians admit .that the continuing German thrusts in this sector seriously threaten the Soviet flank.

' 'Red Star ' declares that the Russian Guards in one sector in the Byelgorod area recaptured their original positions, while Soviet troops on the Orel-Kursk front captured a line of German trenches, after which they beat back a panzer attack. The paper added that the battle'on the Byelgorod front was daily becoming more acute. The Germans are suffering heavy losses in tanks and planes as their attacks are repeatedly flung back. One correspondent says desperate fighting has been raging eastward of Byelgorod in the last two days, with R-okossovsky's armoured units smashing repeated panzer attacks to force a crossing of the Upper Donetz, .which runs eastward of Byelgorod. Attack and counterattack are still following 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.

' Izvestia ' states that (Russian artillerymen on the 'Byelgorod front in a three-day battle knocked out 62 tanks, silenced 34 artillery, 14 mortar batteries, and repulsed 36* German panzer and infantry attacks.

London military commentators consider that the Russians have won the first round, and that on the ninth day of the offensive the danger is no greater than on the first day of the attack