EAST-WEST ASSAULT CLOSE

Evening Star, Issue 25172, 11 May 1944, Page 5

EAST-WEST ASSAULT CLOSE

(Eeceived .12.50 p.m.) LONDON, May 10. German military quarters believe that the fall of Sebastopol, which is now officially admitted, will be the' signal for a Eussian ■offensive ? bß the southern sector, ending, the lull on the eastern front. This was.indicated by the official spokesman of the German .War Ministry, whose statement that a Russian offensive is believed to be ..shaping for the near future is quoted by the German Overseas News. Agency. Reuter's Moscow correspondent says the, fall of Sebastopol may be the beginning of the final blows from eastand west'against Hitler's Europe. The way is now clear for the opening of the Red army's Balkan offensive. The Germans' Black Sea flank has been placed in the greatest peril, and the eyes of the Soviet Command are now fixed on Rumania and the other Balkan countries. The correspondent says Moscow is also taking the smashing of Sebastopol's " impregnable " defences as a herald and augury of Allied invasion from the west. ' Pravda,' hailing the victory, says: " On the eve of the new blow to be struck against Hitler's Germany, the magnificent storming of Sebastopol is a happy omen. It shows what these ' unassailable fortifications,' these ' Atlantic walls ' are worth." The British United Press's Moscow correspondent says that 10,000 Rumanian and German soldiers were killed by the tremendous artillery blow from the thousands of massed Eussian guns tohich opened up the final assault against Sebastopol. It was the greatest artillery barrage ever carried out on the Russian front. Huge blocks of granite rocketed into the air as the shells struck the hills surrounding, 'the city, and when the Russian infantry launched their assault, they, found the ground strewn with masses of twisted gun's and! the-wreckage of fortifications, together with the mangled bodies of tens' of thousands of Rumanians and Germans.