Pouring Across Oder On Berlin Front

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 58, 9 March 1945, Page 5

Pouring Across Oder On Berlin Front

LONDON, Mar. 7. Soviet assault troops captured a vital bridge intact in lace of fierce opposition and columns of lorries, taDks and heavy guns are now pouring across an undisclosed river “on the Berlin front. ’ ’ Front-line reports add that, to protect the bridgehead, the Busslans have concentrated on one sector 500 yards long, 120 heavy gunß and mortars, 18 heavy machineguns, and 90 anti-air-craft guns. The German New* Agency last night said that Marshal Zhukov's forces are now launching a great number of local atacks at the bridgehead which they hold at Lebus, on the west bank of the Oder, only 33 miles from Berlin, and at two bridgeheads north and south of Kustrin. The German commentator (von Hammer) stated that the Bussians had penetrated the northeast section of the German fortifications at Kustrin hut had been thrown back. Another German report said the Bussians launched as many as seven attacks against Kustrin yesterday, while yet another said Marshal Zhukov was attacking Kietz, on the west bank of the Oder, two miles southwest of Kustrin, on the main Kustrin-Berlin motor road, which appears to have been cut. Beuter’s military correspondent points out that tho capture of Gcllnow. Massow and Stepenitz indicates that the east bank of the Oder Estuary, along tho Stettin Lagoon, is virtually cleared of Germans except for a few Bmall isolated pockets, from the sea near Kammin, which was captured yesterday, to just east of Stettin. German reports in the past few hours indicate that the Bod Army also holds the east hank of tho Lower Oder from the Echwedt area to Altdamm,’ opposite Stettin. Thus, adds Beuter, the Soviet and German reports mean that the Germans are cleared from the whole of the east bank of the Oder from the Baltic to the far south, in Upper Silesia southeast of Oppeln. Beuter’s Moscow correspondent re ports that Marshal Bokossovsky has opened a general converging movement against Danzig, and the rumble of Buz slan guns can be heard in the city Marshal Bokossovsky’s troops are 29 miles southeast, 30 miles south, and 50 miles southwest of the city. Butow, a highway centre, is the main obiective of the thrusts from the southwest and west. It is now under fire. Troops on the First White Buss! an Front completed the destruction of the German group encircled south of Schivelbein, 28 miles south of Koiberg. Eight thousand prisoners were taken, according to preliminary data, includ-