IN MESOPOTAMIA.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15132, 29 January 1917, Page 2

IN MESOPOTAMIA.

ANOTHER BRITISH PISH.

HEAVY LOSSES BY THE ENEMY. LONDON, January 27. Mesopotamia official: By a determined assault, under cover of -itense bombardment, we seized and consolidated 1100 yards of first line trenches on the right bank of the Tigris, south-westward of Kut-el-Amara, also a considerable length of second-line trenches. Our losses were slight. -The Turks to the westward of theHai River thereupon made four furious r counter-attacks. The first and third ' were broken by artillery, infantry, and machine-gun fire. The second and fourth were momentarily successful. We resumed the offensive and much of the ground whence we had bee;. temporarily dislodged. The Turkish losses all day were extremely heavy. Seventy were prisonered, and 580 corpses were buried at the loop eastward of liut-el-Amara, besides 500 buried by the enemy. CLEVER TACTICS BY TURKS. t'.-iKIS, January 27. • Mr Candler, in a message from Mesopotamia, says: On the morning of January 19 we occupied a triangle of trences, the last foothold of the Turks at the bend of the Tigris, below Kut. The enemy resisted in the most dogged manner for ten days, but as he was cornered we economised casualties in the advanced trenches. Gradually our concentrated artillery and trench mortar fire made the area hardly tenable, but the enemy made desperate sorties and counter-attacks. We had cleared part of the last tenches with the bayonet, and finally the Turks departed in a most clever way. They kept up the noise of digging all night, while they slipped across the Tigris in boats, pontoons, and coracles, which had been concealed in shelters beneath the hanks. Hence the assault in the morning was comparatively bloodless.