Northern Hupeh, May 9.
Spread over a 300-kilometre U-shaped front, extending from the vicinity of Sinyang on the Peiping-Hankow Railway in Honan westward to areas south of Siangyang, on the upper Han River, in northern Hupeh, Japanese troops today were continuing the advance against an estimated 20 Chinese divisions forming the bulk of the defence of the Chinese Fifth War Zone.
Two hundred kilometres long up t2 Sunday, the Japanese front was extended a further 100 kilometres as the northernmost Japanese wing nea Sinyang swung into action early yesterday morning across the moonlit foothills of the western Tapieh mountains, With the Japanese forces in northern Hupeh, closing in upon Sianyang. where Gen. Li Tsung-jen, Kwangsi leader and Commander-in-Chief of the Fifth War Zone, was said to have his headquarters, the Chinese were reported by Japanese pilots to be fleeing northward, Japanese forces, officers here aimed, were already astride the Yingshan-Siangyang highway stretching across northern Hupeh.
The highway was said to have been cut by a detachment that advanced 130 kilometres in three days in a march upon Siangyang.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.