NEW TACTICS IN ALBANIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 85, Issue 37, 13 February 1941, Page 5

NEW TACTICS IN ALBANIA

BOTH SIDES CHANGE ITALIANS TO DESPERATELY DEFEND VALONA (By Telexraph—Press Association— Copyright) Received Feb. 12, 9 p.m. LONDON, Feb. 11. The Times’ Athens correspondent says that both sides appear to be developing new tactics. The Italian? have suddenly begun to display an unwonted taste for night operations, while the Greeks are reviving tactics of early days of the war. Prisoners assert that the Italians are hastily constructing fresh defences south-eastward of Berat, leading southward and then westwards to the coast northward of Himara. This is evidently the line on which the enemy is intending to put up a desperate resistance fo" the defence of Valona. Prisoners also declare that, th? Italians lost more men in the last fortnight, than during the rest of the campaign.

LONDON, Feb. 11. A Greek communique states that Greek planes bombed Italian lines while fighters engaged enemy formations on the northern front After a sharp engagement Greeks captured high commanding positions and dispersed Italians with severe losses. In the northern sector the fighting is livelier than it has hcen for some days. British long-range guns, which recently arrived in this area, went into action between Pogradec and the Skhumbi River,