ROAD TO RIGA

Evening Star, Issue 25225, 12 July 1944, Page 5

ROAD TO RIGA

Russians Approach Last Fortress

(Rec. 11 a.m.) LONDON, July 11. To the North, General Bagramyan's artillery is moving within range of Dvinsk, which is the last great fortress commanding the road to Riga. A big thrust past Vilna has been made in the past 24 hours, though the battle is still raging in the centre of the city. German airborne troops have been flown in in an effort to save Vilna. Russian mobile forces are fanning out across the Latvian and Lithuanian borders at a rate unequalled in the whole campaign. The northern front is moving rapidly towards Kaunas. The main battle for Dvinsk is at hand. Siauliai railway junction, westward of Dvinsk and controlling the network between Riga and Tilsit (Prussia) is the key. to the entire northern sector. The number of Germans killed or taken prisoner in the Minsk trap, which

early reports said was over 41,000, u mounting in thousands daily, and the final figure is expected to exceed that of the v itebsk and Bobruisk traps. A Russian guerrilla army of 170,000 has been incorporated in the Red army, say Moscow reporta.: Many guerrillas are helping to map up the trapped German forces near Minsk and Vilna. The guerrilla army is a complete replica of the regular Soviet army. ' It has its own newspaper and radio equipment. The guerrillas operating in the Minsk forests before the Red army's advance had a secret arms dump and even a small arms factory hidden on an island in the middle of a marsh. They had a number of light tanks which they had captured from the Germans. The guerrilla leader, Lieutenantgeneral Koslov, said that -in the Minsk area 10,000 of the 75,000 partisans were women.