AUSTRIA NOW OBJECTIVE

Southland Times, Issue 25546, 14 December 1944, Page 5

AUSTRIA NOW OBJECTIVE

RUSSIAN DRIVE IN SOUTH TANKS HAMMERING AT BUDAPEST (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) LONDON, December 13. While Red Army tanks and artillery blast a way into Budapest, other forces south of the city are moving towards the Austrian border. Marshal Malinovsky’s men are now 85 miles from the frontier and the broad, flat Danube valley lies before them. A new Russian column is approaching Budapest along a narrow valley, north-west of the city. These men are now nine miles from the capital. Ninety miles north-east of Budapest, at Miskolcz, the Russians are developing their threat to the Germans in Czechoslovakia. A correspondent in Moscow estimates that the liberation of the Czechs should not be far distant. The Moscow correspondent of Reuter’s reports that the German defenders of Budapest are battling with a strength that is compelling the Russians to crack the city’s defence arc strongpoint by strongpoint. Red Army infantry, after riding into battle aboard tanks, are infiltrating behind the defence points and softening up whole sectors preparatory to a final blow against the heart of Budapest. The Russian Army newspaper, Red Star, says: “The breach into which the R’ed Army is pouring in the industrial area of north-east Budapest is like a gate cut in the wall of defences.” FULL FURY OF WAR The German News Agency says: “Stormoviks are now carrying the full fury of war into. the centre of Budapest, over which the roar of artillery hangs like never-ending thunder.” The Stockholm newspaper, Tidningen, says that the German forces are running the gauntlet in the escape corridor north-west of Budapest. The most northerly of the two railways leading to Vienna from Budapest has been cut. A hand-to-hand, house-to-house struggle is taking place as the Russians begin to break into the outskirts

of Budapest, says the Moscow correspondent of Reuter’s. Russian tanks and artillery are blasting paths in the defences, and Soviet storm troops are Battling with isolated knots of resistance. The tide is turning against the Germans, whose freedom of manouevre is restricted by the threat of Russian tank blows against widely separated points in the city’s perimeter.