SHELLS FALL IN SUBURBS

Southland Times, Issue 25547, 15 December 1944, Page 5

SHELLS FALL IN SUBURBS

FIRES RAGE IN BUDAPEST DEMOLITION SQUADS AT WORK (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) LONDON, December 14. The Red Army is shelling the outer suburbs of Budapest. In rain and mud, the Russian infantry and tanks are pushing towards the capital and were last reported seven miles away. The Germans are fighting hard from a tight ring of strongpoints and anti-tank ditches. Minefields are delaying the Russian armour. One-third of Budapest lies destroyed by Russian shellfire and demolitions, according to reports from Berlin, says the Stockholm correspondent of The Daily Express. Special German demolition squads are at present blowing up buildings and bridges which have escaped the shells, bombs and fires. About 500,000 citizens of one of Europe’s most beautiful cities are now living in what a German correspondent describes as an inferno. There is no water, no gas and no electricity and the fire brigades are helpless to fight the fires which are raging everywhere. Following the capture of Godollo, 10 miles north-east of Budapest, Russian spearheads are stabbing into the northern suburbs of the capital, says the Moscow correspondent of the British United Press. Savage hand-to-hand fighting is going on between Godollo and Budapest, Russian infantry charging with bayonets to hurl the Germans from their last strongpoints. DELUGE OF RAIN Reuter’s correspondent reports that fresh deluges of rain have made heavy going for the Russian storm troops on die outskirts of the city. Mud clings to their boots and clogs the tractor plates of the tanks and mobile guns. The Germans have linked hamlets and houses into a tight network of strongpoints, making a Russian advance of even one mile a considerable success. Russian artillery drawn up on the northern and southern outskirts of Budapest is within easy range of any big target in the sprawling city, says the American Associated Press correspondent in Moscow. The German garrison is apparently well dug in for a siege, even at the price of the capital’s destruction. Marshal Malinovsky appears reluctant to attempt to smash frontally into the flat, crowded zone. TWIN CITIES Pest is on the east bank of the Danube while hilly Buda is on the west bank, where the Germans have commanding observation over Pest, which is still not completely encircled. Russian observers do not minimize the military problem of the reduction of the fortress city, where the Germans are apparently prepared to make a suicide stand. Repoits reaching Moscow indicate the seriousness with which the Germans regard the threat to Vienna and the southern regions of Germany, created by the Red Army’s break-through north of Budapest. DANGER TO REICH The official newspaper, Red Star, states: “All military and industrial establishments in the remaining parts of Hungary are being feverishly evacuated, and those which were moved from Hungary to within the Reich frontier when the Russian advance in Hungary became dangerous are being moved deeper into German territory. The Germans realize that the danger hanging over Hungary is a danger for all the southern provinces of the Reich.” The Soviet communique says that the Russians in Hungary continued the offensive north-west and north of Miskolcz and occupied a number of inhabited'localities. The Red Army northeast of Budapest captured eight places and three railway stations. The Russians in the Miskolcz and Budapest areas took prisoner 1700 Hungarians and Germans.