DESPERATE THROW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25736, 6 January 1945, Page 5

DESPERATE THROW

RELIEF OF BUDAPEST FIERCE GERMAN ATTACKS WAVE AFTER WAVE OF TANKS (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 5. The Red Army’s great battle to reduce the garrison of Budapest continues to make progress, while 30 miles to the west other Russian forces are holding back fierce German attacks designed to break through the Soviet ring, and relieve the capital. The enemy is throwing in wave after wave of armour in a desDerate attempt to force a way through to Budapest, and Luftwaffe packs are trying to blast a corridor to the east. Fierce air battles are raging. “ Russian planes are making virtually non-stop strafing attacks on German infantry and armour north-west of Budapest,” says the Moscow radio. “ The enemy persists in launching successive counter-attacks, but black clouds of smoke from burning German tanks are witness to the effectiveness of the Russian Stormoviks. •. The Germans inside Budapest continue to make furious counter-attacks, but these are being beaten off with huge losses to the enemy.” Although the Germans have thrown fresh tank units into the Komarno sector, north-west of Budapest, where the enemy is attempting to break through to Budapest and relieve his encircled forces, the British United Press correspondent in Moscow says the belt of territory 35 miles wide which' the Rus-, sians now hold around the city is so broad that there is little hope of the Germans getting through. The correspondent adds that it is now believed that the Germans and Hungarians in Budapest increased the ferocity of their resistance in the past few days because they had advance information about an imminent thrust in the Komarno area which was designed to relieve them.

However, the gains made by German tank divisions in this area furnish mute and terrible evidence of the desperation with which the German commanders threw their forces against the massed Russian batteries which held the German attack.

Reuter’s Moscow corresoondent says the German rescue bid from the Komarno area apparently came too late. It is ninp days since the Russians made their initial penetration of Budapest, and the German garrison in the city has since been critically weakened. Red Army tanks and sappers inside Budapest are co-operating in clearing a path through the German barricades blocking the broad avenues leading to the centre of the city. The Russians are reported to have surrounded the ancient Buda citadel on Blocksberg Hill on the west bank of the Danube, A powerful German groirn is clinging to this key position. An indication of the manner in which full realisation of its plight is being kept from the Budapest garrison is the fact that Hungarians captured yesterday discovered the city was surrounded only when they laid down their arms.

The Free Hungarian radio declared that*- in addition to pitched battles around the Parliament Building, there were also struggles raging around the Stock Exchange and the High Court of Justice, all of which are situated in the centre of Pest. The radio added that only a small part of Budapest remained in German hands. Moscow radio declared: “The final annihilation of the German forces in the Budapest cauldron is a matter of days. The Germans, in the battles for Budapest, lost more than 10,000 killed, 30,000 wounded, and 1429 captured.”