Hungarian Officials Preparing To Leave

Northern Advocate, 2 December 1944, Page 5

Hungarian Officials Preparing To Leave

(Rec. 1 p.m.) LONDON". Deceember 1. Hungarian Ministries and public authorities have made prepai'ations to leave Budapest, said Berlin radio quoting a despatch from a war correspondent at Budapest. “In Hungaria, propaganda has set itself the task of acquainting Hungarians with their peril in order to shake them out of the indifference which might easily lead to defeatism,” the radio said.

“Budapest’s eastern districts are being evacuated, shops are being emptied and cafes and restaurants are only open to sell alcohol between 6.30 p.m. and 7 p.m. With the Russians on the west bank of the Danube, the system of defence works embracing the eastern half of Budapest is being extended to the western side. The inhabitants are hard at work throwing up a chain of earthworks. Trenches, gun emplacements and machine-gun nests are being speedily erected on quays on the west bank' of the Danube, and bridges are being mined.” Many Prisoners Taken

The capture of 8150 Germans and Hungarians is recorded in tonight’s Soviet communique which says' that the Russians in Czecho-slovakia forced the Ondava River, and five miles west of it captured the railway junction of Trebisov, 22 miles south-east of Kosice.

The Red Army fighting in Czechoslovakia from November 23 to 30 captured 3000 Germans and Hungarians. North-east and north of Pecs the Red Army fought its way into more than 60 places. During the battles for the crossing of the Danube, north of the Drava River, and during the break-through operations on the west bank of the Danube to Thursday, they captured 5150 Germans and Hungarians. *

Deeper Into Salient

The combined Yugoslav and Russian forces are driving deeper into a salient on the west bank of the Danube, a little under 90 miles from Austria, the Moscow correspondent of the Associated Press reports. The fierce battle for Miskolcz, anchor of the German defences North-eastern Hungary, has been lesumcd. It appears that the Germans on this front, because of Hungarian desertions, are depending entirely on their own forces to hold the sagging line. Reuter’s Moscow' correspondent says the Germans, who held lhc approaches to the communications centre of Eger, are now sprawled across silent machine guns in rocky hill emplacements around the town. They were killed by Russian snipers, who, before the Red Army’s breakthrough into Eger, crept through the hills picking off the key defenders. “Red Star,” in a despatch from Czechoslovakia, stales that the level of the flood waters is still rising. Rivers and streams are merging into lakes through which General Petrov’s 4th Ukrainian Army is advancing waist-deep, and sometimes neckdeep. in water. The German News Agency reports that the Russians at Miskolcz, carried out a large scale attack, in which they made limited gains. The new assault is coordinated with the Russian oifensive west: of Uzhorod.