POWERFUL STRIKING FORCES

New Zealand Herald, Volume 80, Issue 24747, 22 November 1943, Page 3

POWERFUL STRIKING FORCES

GERMAN SUCCESS IN JITOMIR AREA By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright r-, D . LONDON, November 21 Russians have made a new bridgehead over the Dnieper !n the Cherkasy area, 150 miles above Dnepropetrovsk. One Soviet force is fighting m the north-western suburbs of Cherkasy. The Red Army has also made more headway in its drive into the Dnieper bend south-west of Dnepropetrovsk. /-m. * U rT S k aV . e keen pouring reinforcements into the Cherkasy bridgehead since its establishment by airborne troops and guerillas, and they have now got powerful striking forces across the river. One spearhead is trying to smash its way through the triple ring of earthworks, pillboxes and machine-gun nests barring the approaches to Cherkasy, while others are reported to have by-passed the town and to be pushing to the west. North of the Kiev bulge the Russians have captured Ovrutch, an important junction on the Leningrad-Odessa railway. This was announced in an Order of the Day issued by Marshal Stalin. The Russians have pushed further up the Pripet River and are strengthening the wedge they have driven between the German armies in the Ukraine and those in White Russia.

General Rokossovsky s troops striking out from Rietchitsa have breached the enemy s defences at several points and liberated many more villages. The Germans have rushed up fresh troops in a desperate effort to recover the ground they have lost. Yesterday they launched nine counter-attacks, but the Russians flung them all back and then swept forward themselves. It was announced earlier that the Russians had evacuated Jitomir, the important railway junction west of Kiev, which General Vatutin's forces overran some days ago. Since then German panzer and infantry forces had been battling fiercely against the south flank of the Soviet wedge in an all-out effort to recapture Jitomir and check the Russian drive through the Ukraine.