RED ARMY FLOOD

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 119, 19 April 1945, Page 6

RED ARMY FLOOD

UNDER AIR UMBRELLA. ASSAULT NEAR BERLIN. (N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.), (Rec. 12.5 p.m.) LONDON, April 18. The German News Agency stated that the Russians are attacking under "a permanent air umbrella with fresh troops coming forward as though on a conveyor oea". Tonight's. Soviet communique makes no mention of the offensive against; Berlin. The communique says that troops of the Third White Russian Command continued the battle for the annihilation of German remnants pressed against the port of Pillau, on the Baltic, and 8/3d prisoners were taken in this area yesterday, also 80 tanks and j self-propelled guns, b 9 armoured' car- j riers, 544 field guns, 416 mortars and 4000' lorries. Colonel Templehof, com- , mander of the 28th German infantry j Division, was captured. Troops on the 'fourth Ukrainian Front south-west and south of Ratibor fougnt their way into and captured 30 localities. On Chechoslovakian territory troops of the Second Ukrainian Front occupied Ivaneice and fought their way into several other places. The troops on this front north of Vienna occupied the town of Mistelbach, besides a lium- i her of other places. • ' ' A naval and air communique states that eight enemy transports totalling 46,000 tons, one trawler, 14 patrolcucters and two torpedo-boats were sunk in the port of Pillau and on the open sea on April 15 and 16. The German Overseas News Agency says Marshal Koniev's tanks have broken through the main German defensive system west ot the Neisse River and reached the area of Finsterwalde, 45 miles west of the river. This means, if the German report is confirmed, that the Russians are now only about 40 miles from. General Hodges's First i Army. I