HEAVY FIGHTING

Grey River Argus, 7 May 1942, Page 5

HEAVY FIGHTING

IN SOUTH RUSSIA Leningrad’s Siege [Aust. & N.Z. Cable Assn.) (Rec. 10.30). LONDON, May 6. The Moscow correspondent of the London “Daily Express” says:—Marshal Timoshenko started attacks in the Kursk, Kharkov, and Taganrog regions. Heavy fighting has been going on for ithe past twenty-tour hours between Kursk and Kharkov. It is claimed by the Russians that two .German infantry regiments were routed in one battle 1 after losing 360 and men and six tanks. . ...

Although Leningrad is again isolated from 'the outside world, it is because of melting ice on Lake Ladoga. Military observers say the city will be able to withstand one ydar’s siege, food and ammunition having been poured in for nearly two hundred days across a railway which crossed Lake Ladoga when it was frozen. The city’s industrial capacity has increased thirty pex cent. Leningrad now proouces all tanks and armoured cars needed by Soviet units fighting in this area. Two million of the people of Leningrad, including children, the aged and sick, were evacuated across Lake Ladoga when the railway was operating. LONDON, May 5. The thaw is still holding up bigscale operations in Prussia, and even in the north and around Leningrad much of the battleground is a muddy swamp. A supplement to a Soviet comrnunique says no important changes occurred on the front yesterday, it states that in three days loll’ Germans were killed on Kalinin front. In one sector of Leningrad front Soviet units in a surprise attack killed 200 Germans. Soviet war communiques every day for v/eeks have reported local- operations in which the Germans have lost severe! hundred or even 1000 or more men killed. These operations include both Russian and German attacks

The Times’s Stockholm correspondent says: Large patches on the southern half of the front are drying, and it is becoming possible for light forces to use the roads in many areas. The Winter kept the Germans largely in the vicinity of the radways, enabling tho Russians to infilter and sometimes penetrate U-e intervening spaces. A Moscow report states that in a message to the population of man occupied Ukraine, Marsha! T.moshenko says: “The Red Army is os the way to liberate you.” He urges the population to do everything In their power to wreck communications in the enemy’s rear, blow up bridges and railway lines, observe the routes the enemy take in their retreat, and show the Red Army the safest roads. The message is printed in the newspaper called “For Soviet Ukraine,” more than 15,000 copies of which were distributed in the rear of the enemy by planes. NEW ENEMY MOVES. LONDON, May 5. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times’s” says: Berlin to-day, announced that the army had specially selected troops, operating since the thaw began in March, to purge the countryside behind the lines. This process is still absorbing a great proportion of the Germans’ energy and time. Most offensive actions and successes which the Germans claimed were really not against the main Russian forces, but against guerrillas, and also Russian regulars distant from railways and metalled roads. The Germans call this a process of deepening their lines of concentrations for the coming offensive, which, however, is unlikely to be launched for weeks, possibly over a month.

The Moscow “Red Star” reports that the Germans are using new giant nine-inch calibre mortar shells, some of which are as powerful as a large aerial bomb.