FIFTH ARMY'S PROGRESS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIV, Issue 241, 8 September 1944, Page 5

FIFTH ARMY'S PROGRESS

NEARING MAIN GOTHIC LINE. (Rec. 10.40 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 7 The situation on the western part of the Italian front where Kifth Army forces are within six miles of the main Gothic Line defences is now almost as serious for the Germans/as in the Adriatic sector, where the elements of five German divisions are making strenuous efforts to maintain their Rimini pivot, says Renter's correspondent at Allied Headquarters in Italy.

The Fifth Army forces control all the dominant features of the hill mass south of Pistoia.

General Clark's forces, moving up the coast, are encountering small arms and mortar fire and minefields, which are delaying their progress to the Gothic Line. A more stubborn defence can be -expected when they reach the west flank of the fortifications.

Reuter's Zurich correspondent says that unless the Germans launch a. general offensive immediately against the partisans in the north of Italy they will suffer a defeat similar to that in the north of France. A correspondent of the Corriere del Ticino, who visited the partisans in the x Lakb Maggiore area, says: "Their operations are part of a compreheiiMVfc plan to liberate the whole of Northern Italy. Their offensive is developing in the provinces of Turin, Lovara, the Riviera, and Lake Maggiorc, .in which large areas already hive been captured."