NEARER MOSCOW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24776, 28 November 1941, Page 5

NEARER MOSCOW

On November 25 the Soviet Air Force destroyed 107 German tanks, about 400 lorries carrying soldiers, 30 field guns, more than 200 carts carrying shells, and 25 anti-aircraft machineguns ana routed more than lour infantry battalions. The rout of the 240th German Infantry Regiment in the central sector is claimed in a supplement to the communique, which also states that on another sector of the central front the Russian forces dispersed five infantry battalions and destroyed 49 tanks. A despatch from the Klin front stated that on Wednesday the situation had become more tense than three days ago and the Germans had captured the town of "S." To-day they threw a big tank unit along the main road, attempting to inflict on Soviet units a frontal blow, but they were met with stubborn resistance and suffered heavy losses. , Village " E," which is situated on the main road, changed hands several times, and both sides suffered heavy losses. In the evening Soviet troops retired to new defence positions. On the left sector in the direction of Klin fierce fighting is going on without interruption. The enemy, paying heavily, reached the river and in some places effected a crossing.

NAZIS IN KLIN AREA RIVER CROSSINGS FORGED CALL TO DEFENDERS (Rec. 1 a.m.) - LONDON, Nov. 27. The latest news from Moscow states that there is fierce fighting on the two western flanks of the capital, and the Germans are throwing in everything they have got in a desperate onslaught. A leading article in Pravda calls on the defenders not to allow the enemy to approach any closer. A Moscow report states that after 24 hours of fighting the enemy succeeded in forcing crossings at a number of points along a river in the Klin area. German panzer hordes are still, trying to smash their way through the Moscow outer defences. The Russian commentator, however, stated that they are not making much headway. There is particularly bloody fighting in the Volokalamsk region, which commands the main road north-east of' Moscow,. and round Stalinogorsk, south-east of Tula.

Whereas the initiative in the Moicow zone still rests with the invaders, the Russians' have wrested it from • them in larger part not only in the Black Sea, but also on the Leningrad front, and they have recovered important ground from General von Leeb, particularly in the Tikhvin area, where the Leningrad-Vologda railway appears to be already wholly, or almost wholly, cleared of the Germans who swooped down on it in the first half of November, says the Stockholm correspondent of The Times. Russian counter-aggres-sion stretched further south, at least to the Bologoie-Pakov railway, where the Russians are pressing the Germans towards Lake Eilman. The Germans hereabouts have apparently released part of their troops to support operations in the Klin area. According to accounts from Berlin, the Germans actually reached the Don at Nakahicheven, just above Rostov, before the Russians launched a successful counter-stroke in the Donstz Basin. The position in the Crimea is unchanged. The Moscow radio states that the situation in the Klin area is tense and complicated, and the Germans have advanced in a north-easterly direction The radio added that 54 degrees of frost is reported in some districts.