FAR EAST FIGHTING

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 December 1944, Page 5

FAR EAST FIGHTING

GREAT GAINS IN BURMA RUGBY, December 28. After an advance southwards ot thirty miles in the last fourteen days troops of the Twenty-fifth Indian Division reached Foul Point at the tip of Mayu Peninsula, states Southeast Asia Headquarters. West of the Mayu River our troops reached a village about twenty-two miles southeast of Buthidaung. Operations continue in our efforts to aislodge enemy opposition on high ground forty-two miles east of Kalewa on the joad to Yeu. Patrol action continued in other sectors. „ A Colombo message says: Ihe capture of Foul Point marks the culmination of twin advances by troops ol the Fifteenth Indian Corps down the Arakan coastal plain and the Mayu Range. The place was found deserted. It is four miles across the sea from Akyab. Holding Foul Point, we could deny the Japanese access from Akyab Island to Matmet River, which has been the line of communication with their troops in the Buthidaung area. Since the middle of October, when the Chinese Thirty-eighth division south of Myitkyina and the British Thirty-sixth Division near Hoorn started their co-ordinated push, nearly nine-ihousand square miles of Burma have been liberated, making iffie toial thirty thousand miles in i North Burma cleared of the Japanese, while in two months, the combined forces killed, over four thousand Japanese.