Bosnian Muslims Capture 2,000 Nazis in Battle Against Fascism in Yugoslavia

By Ernest Agnew — LONDON, Oct. 24 1943 (AP) – Gen. Josip (Tito) Broz’ [anti-fascist]
guerrilla armies, battling German forces along almost the entire length of Yugoslavia, have
stormed two strongly defended towns and captured 2,000 Nazi officers and men in Western
Bosnia, the Free Yugoslav radio announced today.

Tito’s communique describing the capture of the largest number of prisoners of the campaign
lashed out at the Chetnik forces of Gen. Draza Mihailovic, King Peter’s War Minister, accusing
some of them of joining with the Germans in an attack on Tito’s Partisans along the Albanian
border.

“German troops and Mihailovic’s Chetniks are attacking without success at Matesevo, near
Kolasin,” the communique said. “So far they have lost 300 killed.”

At the same time, reports from Greece said that the Germans were building military hospitals in
Macedonia, apparently either in preparation for a major Balkan campaign or in anticipation of
an Allied lunge through Germany’s back door.

Buttressing these reports, the Morocco radio said that Field Marshal Gen. Erwin Rommel had
asked for three additional divisions, about 45,000 men, to crack Balkan opposition, and the
German radio boasted of the Nazis’ “impregnable southeastern defense wall” with a description
of their underground fortifications.

Tito’s Yugoslav announcement said that Bosnian forces [16th Moslem Partisan Brigade] had
stormed and occupied the town of Sanski Most on the Sana river, capturing 865 officers and
men, guns and four radio stations. Units of the same division, it continued, also took Kozarac
along with 1100 Nazi prisoners, leaving the important rail town of Prijedor encircled.

Bittler defensive battles were declared raging in Croatia, near Karlovac.

(A Budapest broadcast, reported by OWI, said American and British planes also appeared over
Hungary from the southwest — the direction of Italy — and that “sporadic bombing has been
reported from various parts of trans-Danubia.”