Crushing Opposition In Stiff Advance

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 205, 30 August 1944, Page 5

Crushing Opposition In Stiff Advance

(By Telegraph—Press Assn—Copyright.) Received Tuesday, 9.10 p.m. LONDON, Aug. 28.

The Russian armies advancing in twin drives along the main roads towards Bucharest and the Ploesti oilfields—down the southern side of the Transylvanian Alps and from the Danube—are chasing the Germans in all directions, says the Associated Press’s Moscow correspondent. Nazi Storm-troopers have tried to persuade the wavering German soldiers to hold on and fight, but the Russians clearly have broken the back of German resistance before Bucharest. The toll of prisoners for the entire Ruman-lan-Moldavian campaign is nearing 300,000.

From the right flank, which advanced down the Carpathians and turned the comer towards Ploesti and Bucharest beyond Focsani, General Malinovsky is throwing numerous columns into the mountains, some of them almost 50 miles into Transylvania. The Times’ Moscow correspondent says that the Red Army, moving in force over an historic route through the Galatz Gap, Is crushing all German opposition in a swift advance towards the Buzau railway junction, which is the last town of importance on the highway to Ploesti, and has brought the Rumanian oilfields within the sphere of Immediate operations. Although there axe no clear indications of how many men or how much material the Germans can still throw in east of this vital Balkans centre, the German losses already huge, have not diminished in the past few days. Stormoviks have done particularly deadly execution at the Seret and Ramnlcusarat river crossings.

Reports from Focsani show that the city was defended exclusively hy Ger mans, and while the struggle was going on the Germans and Rumanians had a little war of their own in the woods nearby. Russian guards at Ismail are having difficulty in preventing German and Rumanian prisoners from having pitched battles. Reuter’s correspondent says the capture of Braila and Snlina means that the Red Army now controls a 130-mile stretch of the Lower Danube from tbe Black Sea inland to a point where one river makes a 90 degree bend southward.

Braila with a peacetime population of 70,000 is an Important naval base for river craft and has grain warehouses With a capacity of 300,000 tons. Russian and Polish troops have established a bridgehead on the west hank of the Vistula 30 miles south of Warsaw, said General Rola Symerski to foreign correspondents at Lublin. General Symerski added that according to his information the Germans had destroyed or burned out one-third of Warsaw and killed 200,000 of the inhabitants.