RAPID ADVANCE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21093, 13 May 1943, Page 3

RAPID ADVANCE

ALLIED TANK PUSH CAPE BON ENCIRCLED AXIS SOUTHERN POCKET (British Official Wireless.) (11 a.m.) RUGBY, May 12. Mopping up on a big scale continues in Tunisia. The latest messages say that tanks which broke through yesterday across the neck of the peninsula turned left along the western road. Cape Bon itself was reached at 2 p.m. by units which covered 40 miles in 18 hours against considerable opposition. For seven or eight hours they advanced in the dark. The enemy held positions astride the road, but British infantry, with fixed bayonets, swarmed on the tanks as the latter advanced, firing on the enemy positions. The infantry leaped down inside the defences, bayonetting the enemy and taking prisoners. An armoured division is now patrolling the coast road. The situations in the centre is still obscure, „ but serious resistance is not expected. The advance has been so swift that bombing had to be abandoned foxfear of danger to the British forces. The area between Hammamet and Tunis is almost cleared of the enemy, but the Germans, with a few tanks, have established small islands of resistance south of Grombalia. The Sixth Armoured Division on reaching Hammamet went straight along the coast towards the Eighth Army lines near Bou Ficha, where the Germans had established anti-tank defences. This pocket, in which the enemy is still fighting, is encircled on 'all sides. The area is estimated at SO square miles, but the situation is changing hourly. The advance was swifter than would have been expected, especially by those who know the hilly nature of the ground which the armour and infantry had to pass through. Concentrated bombing and shooting of Axis troops around Saintc Marie clu Zit and Grombalia. north of Enfidaville, and in the Zaghouan area, continues to inflict losses. Although .the fighting in the north has ceased, enemy groups are still being rounded up. Two hundred have been captured on Jebel Achkel. The air operations have already shifted across the straits, where the nearest ports, Marsala and Pantelaria, were again subjected to a destructive pounding by hundreds of Allied aircraft.