COLUMNS LEAVE KHARKOV

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25303, 13 August 1943, Page 5

COLUMNS LEAVE KHARKOV

ESCAPE GAP CLOSING (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, Aug. 12. The Russians, by cutting the railway line from Kharkov to Poltava, have narrowed the Germans’ escape gap to less than 40 miles. The Germans retreating from Kharkov are now restricted to a single south-bound line running from Kharkov to Dnepropetrovsk. The Russian Air Force is hammering German troop trains piling up on this line and is constantly attacking the confused German columns leaving Kharkov. A supplementary Moscow communique reports that the occupied localities in, the Bryansk area include. Alexeyevka, 11 miles east of Karachev, and also two places near the town of Dmitrovsk, which is about 60 miles south-east of Bryansk, on the main Orel-Sevsk road. Akhtyrka was captured after fierce street fighting in which one Red Army formation wiped out 1600 enemy troops and destroyed 36 German tanks, including 12 Tigers. The Stockholm correspondent of The Times says that apart from Kharkov itself the Russians are threatening the Germans most dangerously on a 50-mile front based on the Kharkov-Sumy railway. The Russians in this sector last February took Akhtyrka, Lebedin, and Sumy in one day and held them until the Germans launched a counteroffensive in the following spring. The Russians, in the past fortnight, have overcome the more permanent defences in. this area and have driven the Germans into relatively open country, with only hastilyimprovised earthworks. The Berlin radio late last night quoted a German High Command report to the effect that the Russians, after new attacks in the Upper Donetz, had succeeded in breaking into the German lines. Hard, fluctuating battles are still in progress. The Russian troops advancing on Kharkov from the north are within seven and a-half miles of the city, which is now stated to be under the fire of the Soviet artillery. The British United Press says: “The flat Ukrainian steppes, broiling under the 'August sun, present a terrible picture. The Germans in many places , have retreated too fast to bury their dead, and the Russians are too busy chasing the Germans to stop for the burying of bodies. Smashed German lorries, guns, and tanks clutter the villages and roads. Demolitions which the Germans had time to do add to other touches of desolation.”