KRIVOI ROG BASE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25458, 12 February 1944, Page 5

KRIVOI ROG BASE

RAPID RUSSIAN ADVANCE NOW NINE MILES AWAY LONDON, Feb. 11. After rapid night advances along the railway from Apostolovo, Russian tanks are only nine miles from the great mining centre of Krivoi Rog, the last big German base in the Dnieper bend, says the British United Press Moscow correspondent. The fall of Krivoi Rog will release massive Russian forces for new drives against the railway town of Novo Bug and the line of the River Bug, the last big natural defence barrier before the Odessa railway. A German spokesman said that violent battles are raging west of Nikopol, where a German withdrawal to new positions is continuing. The Oslo radio reported that heavy fighting has flared up in the Crimea near Kerch and Perekop. The Moscow radio states that the fighting north of Zvenigorodka and Shpola is nearing a climax. The Russians have driven wedges into the German lines, and are now tearing to pieces small groups isolated from the main enemy force Within the larger area of encirclement the Germans are running short of ammunition and rations, while the number of sick is increasing daily. The Moscow newspaper Pravda says that fierce tank battles are raging outside the trap along a 20-mile line frt>m Zvenigorodka, north of Shpola.- The Germans, making an effort to rescue their doomed comrades, are staging dozens of attacks, but no tank has penetrated the Russian curtain of fire.

To-night’s Russian communique states that the Russians, north of Zvenigorodka and Shpola are tightening the ring around the encircled enemy group, and have captured several places, including the railway station of Zavadovka, six miles northwest of Gorodische (which the Russians captured yesterday) and six miles south-east of Korsun. The Red Army west of Apostolovo occupied several inhabited places. According to the Berlin radio, powerful Russian tank and infantry forces are being thrown into a big new offensive north of Neval, which suggests that the Russians are trying to cut the Kingisepp-Polotsk railway, one of the few main supply routes left to the Germans on the northern front.