TOWARD BOLOGNA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 88, Issue 230, 26 September 1944, Page 5

TOWARD BOLOGNA

ALLIED FORCES IN ITALY GOTHIC LINE PENETRATED STIFFENING OPPOSITION NEAR P 0 VALLEY Recd. 11.45 p.m. London, Sept. 25. The Allied Bth Army, after its capture of Rimini, at the Adriatic end of the Gothic Line in Italy, is advancing toward the Po Valley, and in the general direction of Bologna. It is meeting with what is described as stiffening resistance. The sth Army, on the. western side of the Apennines, is also driving toward Bologna, and was last reported 15 air miles from that city. The Gothic Line defences have crashed along an 80-mile front under the combined assaults of the Bth and sth Armies, says Reuter’s Rome correspondent. Allied troops in the central sector of Italy have broken right through to the northern plains, states a British United Press correspondent at Allied headquarters. Fifth Army units, exploiting the break-through north of Florence, are sweeping the Germans before them as they pour down the lower northern slopes of the Apennines. Eighth Army forces, after cutting the Rimini-Bologna road, have reached positions lour miles north of Rimini. They are heavily engaged near Torrepedrera, where they took 300 Germans prisoner. Other Bth Army troops have extended the Marecchia River bridgehead to 30 square miles. The Germans in the Adriatic have not started a wholesale withdrawal, but are fighting bitterly as they are pressed back. The Allies, in two great converging spearheads, now 50 miles apart, are striking through the last few miles that separate them from the North Italian Plains, says a British Official Wireless message. The eastern half of the Gothic Line is a thing of the past. German losses round Rimini are reported by a correspondent to be very high. ‘ Twenty-six hundred prisoners have been taken and thousands of the enemy caught in the Allied artillery barrage lie dead on the battlefield. Two-thirds of the German 4th Parachute Division were destrove d. . “American Fifth Army troops in the central sector have continued to progress north of Firenzuola, while British and Indian troops of the Eighth Army on their right also made important gains,” says an Allied communique. “Heavy fighting continues on the Adriatic sector, where the British and Dominion Eighth Army forces have been meeting very strong resistance.”