CALL TO BALKANS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25299, 9 August 1943, Page 3

CALL TO BALKANS

READINESS URGED GERMAN DISPOSITIONS (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, Aug. 8. A 8.8. C. broadcast to the Greeks and Jugoslavs, transmitted at regular intervals to-day, declared: “ Close your ranks. We undertake to inform you by Allied radio when the hour strikes for general action. Meanwhile, we count on you, as members of the United Nations' armies, to act with discipline. Guerrillas and patriots will carry out as before the special tasks allotted to them in the common struggle.” “It seems obvious that the Germans are digging in in the Balkans for a fight to the bitter end,” says the Istanbul correspondent of the New York Times. “ They have begun a rapid redistribution of troops in Jugoslavia, Greece, and Albania, moving three divisions to the vulnerable Albanian •and Dalmatian coasts and rushing coastal fortifications in Albania opposite Taranto and Brindisi. It is estimated that two divisions of Bulgarians have been earmarked for Montenegro, where the Italians are withdrawing. It is authoritatively stated that General Mikhailovitch agreed that if the Italians abandoned all heavy artillery, machine guns, ammunition, and food he would grant safe conduct to Dubrovnik and Kotor, where the Italians are embarking for Italy.

Sabotage activities by guerrillas in the Balkans have been intensified, and German and Bulgarian reprisals have been most violent. Axis occupying forces killed more than 2400 Serbs in the last three weeks following the Chetnik offensive on July 21, which drove back nearly a full German division to Kraljevo.

The Jugoslavs are agitating for the military use. upon Italy’s capitulation, of more than 80,000 Serb soldiers who are prisoners at Lipari and Napltl. A demonstration of protest, in which 30 persons were killed and 400 were arrested, occurred in Athens following the extension of the Bulgarian occupation of Macedonia. The Algiers radio reports that renewed opposition to the occupying Powers has broken out in Greece. A general strike has started in Salonika.