Word: kassala
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week the campaign in Eritrea began to look like another Italo-British speed contest (see above). From Kassala, a few miles inside Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the British pursued Italians 68 miles to Biscia, head of a railway running down to the Red Sea port of Massaua. Operating here in rough foothills covered with dry six-foot scrub where lions and elephants are more at home than tanks, the British, although forced for the most part to hug the roads, kept so hot after the retreating Italians that the latter scarcely fought even rear-guard actions, until they were within...
...Haile Selassie, sending word to tribesmen in the fastnesses of captive Ethiopia that the day of liberation, castration and feasting was at hand. The British had no major force to spare for a strong thrust at the 100,000 Italians cut off from home in Ethiopia, but at Gallabat, Kassala and down in Italian Somaliland they delivered jabs and jolts. In a swift raid they seized El Wak, across Kenya's east border, took 120 prisoners, seized or burned important Italian supplies...
...road along the coast, British naval units last week hove up and shelled the new outpost, road and wells. Motorized units on land engaged Italian advance units with the usual conflicting report of results. On the eastern Sudan front, British pressure by land and air was increased at Gallabat, Kassala and the roads to Italy's supply base, Gondar, in the Lake Tana region of Ethiopia...
Paramount in Great Britain's grand war strategy is knocking out Italy first, then coping with Hitler. This program began to show in sharp outline last fortnight when the British Middle East forces reoccupied Gallabat and took Italian prisoners near Kassala on the eastern Sudan front-when they struck by air at Naples, Brindisi, Durazzo and Valona from new air footholds in Crete (see p. 23), causing consternation in Rome and loud stories about the Pope's new air-raid shelter...
...moment, was already part way into Kenya. This drive had a double purpose-to keep the British from driving in at Ethiopia's rear, to back up an Italian drive at the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan's rear. An attack on the Sudan, perhaps starting from Kassala, where Italian forces have long been massed, would probably aim at Khartoum, where the branches of the Nile converge...